


Somewhere in an Enchanted Forest...

by Lexathorn



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies), Frozen 2 - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Childhood Friends, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Ice Powers, Long-Distance Relationship, Love Letters, Reincarnation themes, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Sick Character, Sickfic, Slice of Life, Some angst, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21796927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexathorn/pseuds/Lexathorn
Summary: This is a series of fluffy one-shots that I'm writing around the ship Elsamaren. More detailed summaries inside.Prompt 1: Sickfic. Elsa tries really, really hard to be warm for Honeymaren when she's sick.Prompt 2:  Long Distance fic. Elsa returns to Arendelle to give Kristoff guidance about Kingship and something seems to always get in the way of her returning to the Enchanted Forest...Prompt 3: (Modern AU! fic) Elsa has been going on dates set up by her sister to find "the one".  When she meets Honeymaren, Elsa must decide how honest she wants to be with her about her powers.Prompt 4: Soulmate AU where when you write something on your skin with pen/marker/whatever the hell you want, it will show up on your soulmate's skin as well.Prompt 5: Modern Childhood Friends to Lovers AU.Prompt 6: Soulmate AU where soulmates can feel each other’s physical and emotional pain to a degree.
Relationships: Elsa/Honeymaren (Disney)
Comments: 70
Kudos: 603





	1. The Perfect Remedy (Sick!fic)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so, I'm starting a series of one-shots. They'll all be a part of the same universe unless I state otherwise in the notes. Hope you enjoy this one :)

What was the hottest thing she had ever touched?

She remembered a summer where the heat stuck in the air during all hours of the day. It was a summer of sweltering pavement, dried up rivers, and refuge in juicy berries, featherlight sheets, and the cool walls of the castle. 

She remembered hanging on her mother’s arm as she checked the progress of party preparations in the kitchen. And she watched the pretty blue flame on the stove, the same shade as Anna’s favorite blanket, fluttering in the breeze from the open window. She remembered her mother’s frightful yell that came too late when she stretched her small hand out to touch it, expecting it to be like the spitting water fountains outside, only to feel a sensation grow rapidly on her skin that felt like barbed wire. 

She remembered hastily throwing on her clothes and running out the door to her first meeting with international ambassadors as the queen, before the teapot that a servant was carrying suddenly smashed on the floor as she bumped into him, and she felt the painful tingle of burning splashes on her legs. The burns had faded eventually but the heat that rose to her face when she showed up late stayed imprinted on her mind for long afterwards. 

Even as the coldest person in the world, she was not impervious to heat. There were many kinds of heat that she could feel. She had spent her whole life with the cold but only now was she starting to understand what heat was.

Heat was not… being curled on top of her covers in her bedroom, trembling as the frost overtook all the furniture. She didn’t know how to justify being around people as long as she was like this. If she just stayed there, and any impact her powers could have on the physical world remained contained, maybe she could bare dismissing every knock on the door from her sister that she heard. 

Heat was not… shedding her tears when her favorite stuffed animal’s stitching came undone, a polar bear named Pookie, and she was too afraid to approach one of the servants and ask to have him fixed. So, she kept hugging him close at night and waking up to Pookie’s stuffing spilling out onto the bed. Every morning she gathered it up and tried to rearrange it in the right spots. She watched Pookie go from plumpy to lumpy to saggy as the hole in his stitches kept getting wider and wider. Finally, one of the maids noticed and took the bear, replacing it with a brand new one from a toy shop. She remembered looking at it, wishing that the new bear had button eyes like Pookie, instead of shiny, expensive, glassy orbs. She didn’t tell the maid her mistake but every time she passed her in the halls, Elsa coldly looked the other away. 

_Heat_ _was_ thick fur blankets enveloping her body, her face pressed to the soft material, breathing in the scent of pine, wild jasmine, and honeysuckle. Heat came from a body pressed close to her, her brown hair splayed out on her back being touched and caressed with the same care that she would apply to handling a stuffed bear with button eyes. It was leaning over in the morning and planting a solid kiss on freckled brown skin, sliding her hand over strong arms, squeezing to get a sleepy grunt from her companion. 

Elsa loved the feeling of Honeymaren in her hands and when she moved to properly meet their lips for a kiss that became more, and more, and more, Elsa could have sworn that her body had been born out of fire, not ice. 

.  
.  
.

The first time that it happened, she had been spread thin, all across camp. Unlike everyone else, she wasn’t sweating in the summer heatwave, jogging back and forth between cooling people’s water skins and creating an ice goahti for the camp to escape the abnormal heat in. She regularly checked in on the elderly, who were sewing more pouches and skins, and the children, who had been given a day off from their instructions, knowing they were more likely to be victims of the heat. She only stopped when she saw two Northuldra women point in the direction of the garden, talking worriedly back and forth, wiping sweat from their brows. 

Elsa only needed to make out the words “honey” and “exhaustion” before dropping everything and sprinting to the garden where crops were being harvested. The hot weather was killing off the fish in the river, making the Northuldra scramble to their other food resources. Honeymaren had volunteered to help take in some of the crop and plant new ones. She had been out there all day and Elsa had thought she would take a break when she needed to. 

When Elsa sprinted past the tree line onto the field, her fears were confirmed when she immediately saw a huddle of people around a collapsed Honeymaren. Exhaustion had taken her. Elsa quickly navigated around the crops and tubers planted in the dirt, not caring if it got her feet dirty as her main mission was to break the huddle of people and take the woman into her cool arms. 

Honeymaren’s pulse was weak, yet rapid. Her breathing was shallow and her skin had gone pale, glistening with dampness, sweat, and goosebumps. She wasn’t conscious and was unresponsive to her name being said. Elsa caught Ryder’s eyes as he ran over and her eyes screamed, ‘ _Help me help her.’_ Ryder took Honeymaren and lifted her easily despite the heat making everything feel heavier. In the ice goahti, Ryder placed Honeymaren down on her back. He left and returned quickly with water and a wet cloth that Elsa took in her hands and cooled to a frosty temperature. She put the cloth on Honeymaren’s forehead. Elsa laid down on her side next to her and draped her arm over the woman’s abdomen, trying to lend some of her coldness to the woman with flustered skin from the unforgiving sun outside. Then, they hoped that the colder environment would be enough to help her regain consciousness so that she could rehydrate.

When Honeymaren started to stir, it began with the fluttering of her eyelids, and the swallowing of her throat, trying to produce some moisture in her dry mouth. Elsa had been watching her to catch this moment and instantly passed her a water skin. She put her arm around the other woman’s shoulders, helping her tilt her head towards the drink.

“You _fainted_. It got too hot outside.”

Honeymaren’s grip on the water skin was feeble at best but she felt like the water was breathing new life into her with each sip that she took. The water was crisp like ice and it cut through the hotness that clung inside her head and body. Elsa then passed her a bowl of cooked cereal and oats that Yelana had brought, which would help Honeymaren regain her energy. If she managed to keep the food down, they knew that the worst was most likely over.

She ate valorously, albeit somewhat slowly, taking breaks in between raising the spoon to her mouth. When the bowl was finished, she released her hold on it, letting Elsa set it aside, and laid herself down again against the cool earth.

“I think I feel better,” she said weakly. “You… should go and see who else might need help.” She lightly patted Elsa’s arm. “I got this, snowflake,” Honeymaren winked.

Elsa knew that she was right. She really, really did. But how could she tear herself away?

Elsa reluctantly replied, “Okay… okay, but I won’t go far. I’ll check in on you again soon.” She started to pull herself away.

“ _Wait_.”

Honeymaren tugged lightly on the fabric of Elsa’s dress and she understood the wordless beckon. Elsa kissed her, cupping the woman’s cheek and stroking the hot skin with her thumb. The kiss was more subdued, yet still full of love. Honeymaren’s lips nipped at hers dizzily. The water had smoothened her chapped lips, and now they sent reassurances to thaw Elsa’s worry. In that moment, they were the perfect dichotomy. The kiss was like the collision of two poles; Elsa’s coldness battling against an inferno that blazed in Honeymaren’s exhausted body.

Afterwards, when Honeymaren had recuperated and her body was back to a normal temperature, she grabbed onto Elsa and whispered in her ear-

“You glow when your warmth and coldness come together.”

.  
.  
.

The second time that it happened, they were visiting Arendelle, and it had started slowly. For Honeymaren, it began in the morning, when the first thing she noticed before she even opened her eyes, was that her throat felt like sandpaper. And trying to swallow felt like dragging charcoal across her bare skin. She got up anyway and as she and Elsa ambled through the streets of Arendelle, she tried to fight the fogginess that was forming in her head and the mucky feeling in her chest. The muckiness intensified, scratching and clawing from her lungs to her throat to her nose until it came out in coughs that she tried to cover up. First, she coughed into the lapel of her jacket while Elsa bargained with a pastry saleswoman. Next, she coughed on her napkin pretending to have something stuck in her throat. By the third time, however, Elsa noticed and immediately dragged her back to the castle where she called for peppermint tea, more cotton blankets, a doctor, and lots and lots of chocolate.

This was exactly what Honeymaren had been trying to avoid. She saw the many servants of the castle hustle back and forth, trying to accomplish Elsa’s requests, and she felt _bad_ about everyone making so much of a fuss. Just because of a little cough.

She managed to persuade Elsa to hold off on the doctor but to keep Elsa placated, they spent the rest of the day inside. And Honeymaren didn’t mind because Elsa had timidly started showing her family photo albums. She couldn’t help but think that Elsa was the cutest kid she had ever seen, maybe second to Ryder when he was little. The first inkling she got that maybe this wasn’t just an ordinary cough was when sleep claimed her early in the night, unable to keep her eyes open for very long. Elsa tucked her into warm blankets and made sure the heater was on, not that she needed it herself.

The next day was misery _._ Honeymaren cracked her eyes open. Her throat felt like a desert. She had woken up because it had gotten too hot under the blankets and she pushed them away. She really didn’t want to wake Elsa. She wondered for a second if she could convince herself that she could survive until morning like this. But then a cough shook her chest like an earthquake, and she knew…. she needed help.

She shook Elsa’s shoulder to rouse her. Elsa only responded by rolling over onto her stomach, facing away from Honeymaren towards the door. 

Honeymaren rolled her eyes and shook Elsa again, harder this time. 

Now only half-asleep, Elsa mumbled out a question that sounded like, “Why are you awake?”

Mouth dry, Honeymaren managed to croak out, “I think I have a fever.”

Elsa’s eyes flew open and she whirled around like a snapping whip, facing the woman next to her.

“Let me feel,” she said quickly and put her hand to Honeymaren’s forehead. The coolness of Elsa’s skin was bliss and she nearly sighed at the contact.

Without another second wasted, Elsa stood and said, “I’m getting a doctor.” She threw a silky robe over her short nightdress- a sight that on any other day would have made Honeymaren get up thirstily and tug her back to bed- and walked out of the room. Minutes later, a knock came at the door and a maid entered with some tea and a thermometer, sent by Elsa, of course. The tea tasted amazing, thought Honeymaren. It was peppermint with sliced ginger and syrupy honey stirred in. It soothed her throat and softened her coughing.

When the doctor came in with Elsa, Honeymaren told him what else was bothering her. Her nose felt congested and her face _hurt_ around her eyes and nose. There was pressure against her temple that throbbed with her heartbeat. Her skin was clammy from sweating under the blankets but without them cold chills ran up and down her back. Simply put, Honeymaren had a flu. Going from living in the Enchanted Forest all her life, to going to Arendelle and being exposed to all kinds of different germs and diseases in the new environment, had led to this. Honeymaren was prescribed some basic medicine, drinking warm fluids, and rest.

Once the doctor left, Elsa hovered strangely by the door. Honeymaren quirked a puzzled eyebrow at her.

“I- I’ll just go to the old bedroom I used to share with Anna,” Elsa said pointing her finger in an unclear direction. She turned to go-

“ _Wait_.”

Elsa whipped back around.

“Can’t you stay?” Honeymaren asked, hugging the covers close to her chin. 

Elsa paused for a moment and seemingly giving in, she slinked back into bed. Only, Honeymaren noticed that Elsa was laying there like a stiff brick wall. Honeymaren fretted, “You don’t have to sleep so far away.”

Elsa acknowledged that she had heard her by scooting closer. By one inch. Unsatisfied, Honeymaren reached her hand across the invisible barrier, mustered some strength, and tugged on Elsa’s wrist. Elsa resisted, pulling her hand away.

“ _What’s wrong?_ ”

“I just-“ Elsa exhaled, vexed. “Don’t think I should be around you when you’re sick. I’ll only make it worse.”

“ _How_ \- _What do you mean_?” Honeymaren didn’t mean for all her questions to sound quite so… frustrated. But frankly, she was not pleased.

“You shouldn’t have to _be_ cold when you have a cold,” Elsa stated firmly, finally.

“Elsa… you _are warm_ ,” insisted Honeymaren lovingly. “And seriously, Elsa… my nose is clogged, my throat is on fire, and my face feels like an elephant is sitting on it. I _need_ you to cuddle me. _Now_ ,” demanded Honeymaren.

Elsa knew that tone. She scooted over and gently pulled Honeymaren against her chest. Honeymaren sighed, finally content. She wrapped her arms around Elsa and felt her eyes growing heavy as Elsa continually stroked her hair back. She even scratched the spot on the back of Honeymaren’s neck that she knew made Honeymaren shudder with pleasure.

“Sorry, I…” Elsa started. “I guess I’m not used to some of this yet.”

Honeymaren planted a kiss on Elsa’s collarbone.

“Don’t worry. You’re perfect. I love you, Elsa.”

“I love you too.”


	2. Once a Royal... (Long Distance Prompt)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic starts off maybe a bit *steamier* to make up for the fact that Elsa and Honeymaren have to spend some time apart, exchanging letters, as Elsa returns to Arendelle to give Kristoff guidance about Kingship. Something seems to always get in the way of her returning to the Enchanted Forest...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one-shot is longer than the first one. (For some reason all of my fics start out in a bed...) Hope you enjoy it!

Elsa lay awake on her bed, having just woken up moments ago. Even with daybreak outside, the inside of the goathi was rather dark, the only light source being the small opening at the top. There was just enough light to illuminate part of Honeymaren’s sleeping face. Elsa stared at her and admired the curve of her cheeks, the fullness of her eyelashes, and the way her chest moved up and down with each breath. She looked at Honeymaren’s bangs that had grown a little long and knew that Honeymaren would ask her to trim them for her again soon. Without being able to help it, Elsa noticed all these things, both knowing them already and rediscovering them daily about the woman that she loved. 

“You’re staring,” said Honeymaren’s soft morning voice, her mouth quirking up into a smirk. She cracked one eye open and regarded Elsa closely. 

Having been caught in the act, Elsa’s face turned red. Reluctantly, she looked away and facetiously responded, “I'm allowed since you stare at my butt _all the time_.”

Honeymaren faked a gasp, placing her hand over her heart. “ _Who_? _Me??_ ”

Elsa simply rolled her eyes to Honeymaren’s amusement. Honeymaren’s smirk widened, snickering as she let Elsa pull her into an embrace. Elsa cupped one of Honeymaren’s cheeks with her hands as she started placing kisses on the woman’s face. 

Between kisses, she murmured, “Admit it.”

“Admit what?” Honeymaren let her hands wander down Elsa’s body. 

“Admit that you stare at my butt.” Elsa started smiling herself, enjoying this greatly and maneuvered herself fully over the other woman’s body. Honeymaren’s hand slyly drifted to the body part in question. 

“I might admit that I _appreciate_ it from afar when you’re not looking.” 

“That doesn’t mean that I don’t notice,” promised Elsa confidently. 

Not being able to take any more teasing, Honeymaren didn’t answer and instead put her hand under Elsa’s chin and directed her to kiss her properly. She felt Elsa’s knees readjust closer together and squeeze her hips. She heard a sharp intake of breath from Elsa when she ran her tongue along Elsa’s top lip, then deepened the kiss. Honeymaren was glad that they were still in their loose-fitting sleepwear because it was easy to slip her hands under Elsa’s shirt. She pressed onto the woman’s belly area and lightly scratched the skin as she ran her hands down it, resisting the urge to wander north. Instead, she wound her arms around the small of Elsa’s back, pulling her down, flush with her own body. Elsa’s legs slid over hers, the contact of bare skin making them both shiver. Elsa framed Honeymaren’s face with both her hands and gave her one final, long, searing kiss. She pulled away just enough to end the kiss without breaking contact between their foreheads.

“Didn’t get enough last night, snowbird??” asked Honeymaren breathlessly. 

Elsa shook her head lightly, not at all surprised by her girlfriend’s hubris. She escaped the other woman’s embrace, rolling over and lying down on her back again. With her hands, she rubbed at her eyes, trying to shake both the leftover grogginess and the temptation to just continue where they had stopped. She was sure they could, knowing full well that Honeymaren wouldn’t object. But unfortunately, duty called. 

Honeymaren reached over and took one of Elsa’s hands from her face and kissed the back of it. Her demeanor had totally changed as a soft expression took over her features. 

“What was that for?” Honeymaren asked referring to the heated staring and onslaught of kisses that she had woken up to this morning. 

Elsa sighed, gazing upwards at nothing in particular. “I’m just going to miss you. It hasn’t really hit me yet that I’m leaving today.” 

Delicately, Honeymaren kissed down the length of Elsa’s hand to her forearm. She mumbled against Elsa’s skin, “It’s only for a few days.”

“I know… but still.” She gingerly sat up and reached for the letter that she had placed next to the bed. She squinted her eyes at it as she reread it one more time. 

_Elsa,_

_I miss you so much! You have to come see the decorations for the Summer Festival this year. And you have to try the new muffins at the bakery – I really want to just buy the whole shop and put it inside the castle. I can do that now, y’know. Since I’m THE QUEEN. Oh, this is your sister, Anna, by the way._

Elsa internally snorted at her sister’s strong, bubbly personality- even managing to come through in letter form. 

_Speaking of you possibly, maybe, coming back to Arendelle… I kind of have a favor to ask of you. Could you come for a few days and help Kristoff with a trade agreement with the rulers of Weselton while I go meet with the King and Queen of Corona? You know that Kristoff would really, really appreciate it. I realize that babysitting my husband probably isn’t high on the list of ‘fifth spirit’ duties but it would be just this once! Usually, I do all the talking during ‘official’ meetings, but I can’t go with him- this is the first time we’ve been double-booked since he became King!_

_Please let me know soon. I have to leave for Corona in the morning and I would feel loads better knowing I wasn’t leaving Kristoff totally alone. We would both appreciate it!_

_Love,  
_ _Anna_

Elsa had gotten the letter late in the afternoon the day before and had written back immediately with her agreement to help. _Of course_ , she would come to their aid. Especially, since she hadn’t left her position as queen with the most… _forethought_ attitude, basically having hot potatoed the kingdom into her sister’s hands after becoming the fifth spirit. 

Elsa started to get out of bed, Honeymaren already having done so while Elsa was rereading the letter. Elsa waved her hand and her sleepwear transformed seamlessly into her traveling attire. Honeymaren regarded her, sliding her hands into a fresh shirt.

“I wish I could do that.” 

Elsa smiled. “But I would definitely miss watching you get ready,” she said as she walked over. As she passed by, she grazed her hands along Honeymaren’s bare abdomen, making her shudder while her shirt was still halfway over her head. Elsa tugged the shirt down over her girlfriend’s head and body, giggling at the blush that she saw on Honeymaren’s freckled cheeks. 

“Will you walk me to the ocean?” 

“Of course,” replied Honeymaren with a peck to Elsa’s lips. 

.

.

.

Elsa slowed Nokk to a stop, having reached the harbor of Arendelle. The morning was still young, just in time to see the shops opening for the day. It had been some time since Elsa abdicated her throne to her sister, but it had only been a month since Kristoff officially became King of Arendelle. Most of it, no, _all_ of it was still fairly new to him. He could spend as much time with history books and getting his ear talked off by advisors as he wanted, but most rulers learned by doing. That’s what Elsa’s parents had done, it’s what Elsa had done, and now it must be what Kristoff has to do. Having someone nearby who you could trust with anything and rely on was important too. 

And Elsa knew that for Kristoff, _Anna_ fulfilled that role to a T. But being her sister _and_ the former queen wasn’t that far off the mark. She dismounted Nokk and bid him goodbye, before making her way to her former home, the castle. 

_June 2 nd  
_ _Dear Honeymaren,_

_I arrived in Arendelle safe and sound. I also managed to catch Anna before she left on her ship for Corona and wished her good luck and a safe trip. Not that she needs the former- the King and Queen of Corona are incredibly warm-hearted, and they have the nicest daughter. I’m sure that Anna will fit right in._

_Today for breakfast I had these new ‘honey muffins’ at my favorite bakery. And, well, they made me think of you…_

_With that being said, I just wanted to tell you that I got here safely. See you in a few days!_

_Love,  
Elsa_

_June 2 nd  
_ _Dear Elsa,_

_I’m so glad that we learned how to read and write in each other’s languages. When you first came to the forest, I didn’t think we would need to stay in touch if you ever left but now… I can’t imagine going a day without hearing from you._

_Not that you need to write to me every day!! I mean, if you wanted to, though... at least now you could._

_Also, nothing has changed in the Forest since you left. And I’m sure everything will stay the same until you come back._

_Say hi to Kristoff for me. And also Sven and the talking snowman (still can’t wrap my head around how that’s possible.)_

_Love,  
Honeymaren_

_P.S. I feel like there’s a joke in there somewhere about you liking my muffin… but I’ll save it ‘til I see you again._

Underneath the words, Honeymaren had drawn a crude muffin and someone that resembled Elsa taking a bite out of it. 

_June 4 th  
_ _Dear Honeymaren,_

_You know that I love you, right? I say that delicately and wholeheartedly because I’m afraid that I can’t come home as soon as planned. The meeting and subsequent dinner with the rulers of Weselton was… nice but awkward considering how they were trying to make up non-stop for how their Duke had treated me when I became queen. They kept addressing me the whole time and not Kristoff! He thinks it has to do with him being nervous the whole dinner and almost spilling pea soup on himself. Afterwards, he begged me to stay a little longer to help him with the court. While I think that part should be easy for him, after all, court just entails the concerns of our own people, I just can’t say no to him. But I told him I would only supervise, not interfere. He needs to learn on his own but if my presence calms him down until Anna is back, then I want to be there for him._

_I hope you understand where I’m coming from._

_Love you._   
_Elsa_

_P.S. Kristoff says hi_

_June 4th  
_ _Elsa,_

_You know that I love you too, right?? Of course, I understand. Anna and Kristoff are kind of my family too and if you being there is helpful to them then I support it. Everything is peaceful in the Forest, except Bruni almost burned down Yelana’s hut when he fire-sneezed on it. (Don’t worry, everything is fine!)_

_You said that Anna’s trip would only take 6 days total, so at least she will be back soon._

_I’ll keep our bed warm until then._

_Love,  
Honeymaren_

Elsa’s eyebrows shot up at reading the last line. That woman knew exactly how to press her buttons in the right ways. She folded the letter neatly and tucked it into her bag, next to her on the seat in the carriage. She jumped when she heard Kristoff clear his throat.

“So, did Honeymaren have anything _interesting_ to say?” He asked somewhat _too_ nonchalantly from the other side of the carriage. 

“Oh! Um, she said it was fine. Me staying longer, that is,” replied Elsa carefully. 

“Uh-huh,” Kristoff smirked like he knew something. He decided to give Elsa a break and not talk about the red color rising to her cheeks. He slouched back in the seat, running his hand over the top of his head, only to get it caught in his gelled hair. 

“Kristoff… can I ask you how you’re doing?” said Elsa somewhat tentatively. 

“I’m… fine?” He posed it like a question, not exactly exuding much confidence. 

Elsa let out a small sigh and gestured for him to scooch. She moved to his side of the carriage, joining him as she mentally prepared herself to give him a pep talk.

“I know how much responsibility lies on your shoulders,” she started. Kristoff tilted his head a little to the side, indicating that she had his attention. “And I know that before you met Anna, you were just a guy who sold ice for a living who was raised by trolls.”

Kristoff huffed and smiled lightly at that. 

“Simpler times...” He shrugged. 

Elsa continued, “Yes. But now as you enter this new... occupation- This really difficult, complicated, and tiring occupation, I want you to know that I _believe_ in you with all of my heart.” 

She could see Kristoff think as he mulled over what to say and ended up not being able to settle on one thing, “I just want to feel like I actually know what I’m doing. How long did it take you to feel like you could handle it? I mean, I couldn’t even say the right thing when I tried to propose to Anna- the person that I love! I had to try _so_ many times and I always said the wrong thing, or she took it the wrong way- What if tomorrow instead of Anna it’s the King of the Northern Isles? Or the Countess of Weselton? I don’t know _any_ of these people!”

Elsa put her hand on Kristoff’s arm in a comforting gesture, and to pause his rambling. “I know how intimidating it is. Everyone is watching you. They’re all scrutinizing you. It feels like, they’re just _waiting_ for you to make a wrong move.”

“Yes! Exactly. What is that about?”

“Its politics,” answered Elsa with a sympathetic smile. “My mother was Northuldra. She was from a completely different culture with different customs and languages. She wasn’t born into royalty. Yet, she still managed to be a queen that everyone remembers. The same will be said about you.” She patted his shoulder. “What do you think a good king should be?”

Kristoff sighed, sensing where she was going with this. “Well…I think a good king needs to be brave, kind, and full of personal integrity. A king can’t go back on his word. He shouldn’t betray the people that he’s supposed to protect.” Elsa’s mind couldn’t help but flash to her grandfather. “A king needs to be good at making decisions and _planning_. A king needs to be _smooth_.” He enunciated the last point by gesturing his hands. “A king needs to project authority and _influence-“_

Elsa interrupted him before he got ahead of himself, “And you exhibit many of those qualities, Kristoff. You’re right about a good king being brave. You showed bravery when you saved the reindeer from the fire in the Forest. You’re decisive; You always know what you want. You know what your values are, and you wouldn’t sacrifice them for any amount of money or power. And I’m sitting here today because I trust you. Anna _married_ you because she trusts you to _do_ this,” Elsa said with conviction. “The best part is you don’t have to do it alone. You have a partner in Anna, and she will fill in _any_ of the gaps. Whether it’s party planning or dazzling the room with her charm-“ Kristoff laughed at that. “-you’re _stronger_ together.” 

Kristoff looked down contemplatively. Slowly, he started to nod at her. “I can see what you’re saying. But it’s going to take some time to get used to… this.” He gestured at himself and the regal outfit he was wearing. 

“You’ve got plenty of time to be a good king,” reassured Elsa. “You did the right thing, by the way. Asking me to come here and help you.”

“I did?” Kristoff asked.

“Yes! You decided that you needed help and you weren’t afraid to ask for it. Your pride or your ego weren’t your priority.”

“Of course! I just-“ He cleared his throat suddenly. “Thank you for coming by the way,” he said quickly. “I don’t think I’ve properly said that yet.” 

“It’s no trouble at all, Kristoff. Really.” 

“ _Really?_ ” He raised an eyebrow at her. “So, you’re telling me that you don’t mind ‘at all’ that you have to be here instead of with... _you know who_?“ 

Elsa rolled her eyes at his taunting. “No, Kristoff, it’s only a few days. Even though I’ve gotten delayed _a bit-_ it’s nothing! I’ll be back in the Enchanted Forest in no time.” 

_._

_._

_._

_June 8 th  
_ _My dearest Honeymaren,_

_Due to unforeseen circumstances_

Elsa frowned and scratched out what she had written. She couldn’t talk to the woman like an associate! She was her _girlfriend!_

_June 8 th   
_ _My dearest Honeymaren,_

_I think it would be best if I just got straight to the point_

She scratched out her letter again, grabbing a new parchment. Nothing she wrote felt right...

_June 8 th  
_ _Dear Honeymaren,_

_I’ve been counting down the days left until I get to see you again. Just when I thought I wouldn’t have to wait any longer, Anna arrived in Arendelle with some bad news. She’s okay- but she came back from her trip infected with the Coronian Stomach Flu. She’s been stuck in quarantine, to her dismay, so that she can’t infect anyone else. But what this means is... I’m going to accompany Kristoff to the Summit of Nordsjøen in her place. It’s Kristoff’s first Summit. Even Anna would have felt the pressure in the face of this meeting. The entire Kingdom wants me there since Anna can’t go and I don’t think it’s such a bad idea..._

_The Summit is at the Southern Isles this year. It’s a 3-day trip by boat to reach the main city. The summit takes 2 days, so, in total, you shouldn’t expect me for another 8 days._

_I hope you’re not too upset with me. Anna has apologized profusely since coming back, insisting that the pudding hadn’t tasted ‘off’ at the time._

_All my love,_   
_Elsa_

Honeymarenstared at the letter in her hands in surprise. 

Ryder walked up to her, noticing the disappointed expression on her face. “Is everything okay?” he asked, scratching his head under his hat.

Honeymaren sighed. “I’m fine. It’s just, Elsa got delayed _again_.”

Ryder sat himself down on the log next to his sister. He took a look at the letter. “It sounds like she has no choice.”

Honeymaren nodded her head and folded her arms around herself. “I guess a part of me forgot that this is who she is too. _Royalty._ I know that when sheshowed up here, she didn’t even know she had Northuldra roots. She had a completely different life then. But now... it just feels strange that she’s not here,” she finished saying with melancholy.

Ryder put his arm around her shoulders, trying to bolster her up. “Hey, maybe you should go to Arendelle and surprise her?” 

“What??” 

“I think we’ll be okay here if you left for one or two days,” Ryder stated and chuckled. “If you’re there when she gets back from the Summit, she’ll be so happy to see you!” 

Honeymaren gazed incredulously at him, shaking her head even though she was smiling. “I don’t know about that-“

Ryder put a hand up. “Just think about it. You don’t need to decide now.”

Honeymaren nodded to herself before looking at the note in her hand again. She knew that it wasn’t Elsa _or_ Anna’s fault and she made sure to express that in her next letter. Nevertheless, it didn’t feel good watching Gale flutter away with it in tow, knowing that she wouldn’t see the receiver in person quite so soon. Ryder’s suggestion tossed and turned in her head. 

.

. 

.

 _June 13 th   
_ _My lovely Honeymaren,_

_The Summit came to an end today. I’m glad for it. I didn’t need to be reminded of how much I don’t miss the duties of a queen. I’m quite proud of Kristoff. He entertained most of the guests during dinner on both nights. And he made some very creative points during the discussions about our economy and the issue of Åmdalsøyra disrupting the terms of our treaty with Asdal and Revesand. It’s all very important but my brain really can’t manage thinking about it for a second longer..._

_How are you?? I can’t believe it’s almost been two weeks. Do you even remember what I look like? Do you remember the sound of my voice??_

_I’m being dramatic, of course. But I wanted to mention that being at the Southern Isles wasn’t as awful as I feared it would be. The Southern Isles royalty and I have spent the past few years getting along amicably but not talking unless necessary. They’ve been rather embarrassed since the events of my coronation. Well, I’m quite happy to say that Prince Hans’s brothers aren’t nearly as abhorrent as he is. One of them is even a good professional artist. He sketched me in my gown tonight. I thought you might want it as a keepsake..._

Honeymaren’s eyes moved from Elsa’s teasing words to the second page and subsequently had to restrain her jaw from dropping to the ground. 

Attached to the letter was a gorgeous drawing of Elsa. The lines captured her figure beautifully. The charcoal that had been used to draw it perfectly represented the detail in Elsa’s dress through markings and strokes, illustrating the jewels and textures that ornamented the garment. The skirt of the dress had a slit in the side and Honeymaren felt herself blush at the sight of Elsa’s leg poking through. Honeymaren hadn’t needed a reminder of what she was missing but now that she had it in front of her, it couldn’t go ignored. 

Hastily, she packed a bag full of clothes and essentials, not really paying attention if the tops and bottoms matched. She got a piece of parchment from Elsa’s trunk, slapped it down on the lid, and hurriedly wrote out a reply. 

_June 13 th  
_ _Hey Elsa,_

 _ I’m so glad _ _that the Summit went well and that it was a small win for Kristoff. I’m glad in general that he’s getting the hang of being king. The sooner I get you back the better. _

_Everything is fine here! Ryder says hi._

_Can’t wait to see you._

_ Love_ _,_  
 _Honeymaren_

_._

_._

_._

Elsapeered curiously at the letter she had just received. It seemed... off. The tone was different than Honeymaren’s other letters. Elsa squinted at the various parts of it that were underlined. It seemed almost like Honeymaren was trying too hard to emphasize certain words. And it was incredibly brief. She hadn’t acknowledged a greater portion of Elsa’s letter to her. 

And “ _Hey Elsa”_???? 

Suddenly, a pang of worry shot through her chest. What if Honeymaren was covering something up? What if she was secretly upset about how long Elsa had been away, but she didn’t want to seem angry about it, so she was overcompensating with underlines and brevity?

Elsa narrowed her eyes. She had to get back to the Enchanted Forest. And fast. From the side of the ship, she called Nokk out of the water. 

.

.

.

Honeymaren dismounted her reindeer as she came to a stop in front of the castle. A guard recognized her and took the reins from her. She greeted him and exchanged a few words before she stretched her arms up, trying to loosen up the knots from the full day’s ride she had just had. When she approached the castle gates, they opened for her, letting her inside. 

Elsa sat on Nokk’s back, watching her destination come into view. She was relieved that the water spirit could traverse the seas faster than the ship. She had half a mind to lead Nokk straight to the Enchanted Forest, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it without saying goodbye to Anna. Based on the letters that they had exchanged, it seemed that Anna was doing much better. And since Arendelle was on the way to the Enchanted Forest, Elsa considered making a stop the logical thing to do. 

She went straight to the castle, stopping Nokk at the mossy, rocky water’s edge around the stony walls. There was a side door shielded by guards, who immediately bowed when they recognized her. Elsa went inside, making a beeline for Anna’s room, hiking the skirt of her dress up with her hands. She emerged from a side hallway into the large foyer of the castle, the grand staircases ascending around her. 

_“Elsa?!”_

The call echoed around the spacious room. At the sound of her name being called, Elsa’s head whirled up to regard the second floor of the foyer, where she saw a familiar figure leaning against the wooden carved railing.

“Honeymaren?!?”

Honeymaren walked quickly to the top of the stairs, descending them, and Elsa followed suit.

“What are you doing here??” Elsa blurted out at her while climbing the steps in a brisk fashion. 

They met halfway along the stairs and hugged each other tightly. A grin was plastered on Honeymaren’s face, knowing she had successfully bewildered the other woman. 

“Surprise?” 

“You can say that again,” replied Elsa, still processing while pulling away and keeping her hands on Honeymaren’s back.

Honeymaren slid her hands around Elsa’s neck, playing with the baby hairs at the nape of it. Elsa felt the tension in her shoulder’s fall away at the feeling and she melted against the other woman. They gravitated towards each other in unison, lips meeting fervently for the first time in _too long_. Elsa had never had a kiss before that tasted so much like revel and rejoice. Her hands involuntary slid up Honeymaren’s back to the woman’s shoulder blades, squeezing the fabric of her jacket there. Her grip tightened when Honeymaren tenderly pulled her bottom lip between hers.

Remembering where they were, Elsa had to stop what they were doing when she felt Honeymaren’s fingers had weaved into her hair, pulling lightly in a way that Elsa couldn’t resist if she let it continue. 

Honeymaren let out a mischievous giggle at being pushed away softly, knowing she had gotten under Elsa’s skin in the most precious of ways. Elsa wasn’t one to give up the upper hand so easily though. 

“Will you walk with me to go say farewell to Anna, my sister, _the queen_ , who lives here too by the way and could appear unannounced at any second?”

Honeymaren blushed at that and coughed into her hand. “O-of course, Elsa. Lead the way.”

Elsa let the pretense fall as she intertwined their hands and said, “And after that, we’ll go home, okay?” 

_Home_. Elsa could have sighed at the thought of the campfires, their warm bed, and colorful Forest that awaited her. She missed the salty, dewy smell at the shore. Or the aroma of cardamom, coriander, and nutmeg that wafted from the Northuldra stews and soups. She missed wearing whatever she wanted and ached to pull the pins out of her hair. 

But most of all she had missed this feeling that she was experiencing now. When she smiled at Honeymaren and the woman returned it and squeezed her hand, something in her mind clicked into place. 

_She was already home._

.

.

. 

Epilogue

_Elsa,_

_Thank you so, so, so much again for all the help you gave to Kristoff and for representing Arendelle together at the Summit. I promise I will make this up to you! I’ve already sent a fleet of our favorite muffins from the bakery to the Enchanted Forest- wait, I had planned on that being a surprise. Oops! Oh well, be sure to share all the treats with your friends and neighbors. Hold on, can Nokk actually eat? Do you give him carrots? Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have sent so much food??_

_I’ll let you figure that out- Thank you so much again. I love that we can still be a team no matter what. I’ll always be here for you!_

_Love,  
Anna_

_P.S. You did so well, you should consider coming more often!_   
_Just kidding haha_   
_Unless 👀…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed that! I need ideas for the next prompt so if you've got any ideas, please comment them below.  
> Sorry if something slipped through my proofreading.


	3. Daydreaming into the night (Modern AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Modern AU! fic) Almost 27 years old and a retired figure skater, Elsa has been going on dates set up by her sister to find "the one", to no avail. However, her date with Honeymaren saves Anna's matchmaking track record and Elsa must figure out how honest she wants to be with Honeymaren about her powers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These just keep getting longer and longer ':]  
> This is kind of a modern, reincarnation-y, one-shot. And it has a little bit of angst.  
> Merry Christmas Eve! -if you celebrate. Happy Holidays!

_Elsa ran through the most vibrant forest she had ever seen in her life, her feet crunching autumn leaves on the forest floor as her legs carried her forward. She didn’t know where she was going but she just kept sprinting. White birch trees passed as she sped by them. She suddenly heard hooves galloping, approaching her as rapidly as her own gait. She looked to the side and her steps didn’t falter even though her eyes grew large as she took in the amazing sight. The horse was blue shaded and slightly translucent. It’s mane sloshed up and down, the end of it sending sprinkles into the air. It looked as if it was made of water. How could that be?? It gave a light neigh and accelerated past her, dashing into the depth of the trees._

_“No! Don’t go away!” Elsa called out._

_Where was she? What was happening?_

_She followed it, her legs were burning from running so hard. She pushed through the branches and ferns of pine trees and shrubbery, before emerging in a flower dappled clearing. The sight in front of her took her breath away more than the running had._

_The horse stood in the clearing, the sunlight reflecting off it’s body in luminous rays. A person stood in front of it, back turned to Elsa. Her hand was stretched out and was stroking the horse and patting it under its chin. She had long brown hair, tied into a braid, and was wearing soft leather garments, including a fur lined hat on her head._

_Elsa wanted to call out to her, but didn’t, realizing she didn’t want to disturb the tranquility of the scene. She didn’t want the horse to go away again. She started to approach them slowly, the green grass tickling her toes. Seeing her approach, the horse careened his head in her direction._

_The unknown woman startled. Her head started to turn and Elsa could just make out the curve of her nose before she jolted awake._

Elsa groaned into her pillow, slamming her hand a little too hard on her ringing alarm clock. As she awoke, she rolled onto her back and blinked up at the ceiling.

“A horse made of water?” she mumbled to herself, perplexed.

.

.

.

“Don’t let go, okay, Miss Elsa??”

“Okay, I won’t let go. I promise,” said Elsa to the child in front of her, whose hands she was holding tightly in her own. The little one was trying to stay balanced on her pearl white ice skates. She was giving a private lesson today, teaching basic, beginner skills to the little girl that Elsa could probably do in her sleep. She comfortably skated backwards on her own pair of skates, pulling the girl along.

“Do you think you might be ready to do it by yourself?” asked Elsa gently.

“No! I’m not ready!!” The girl’s grip on Elsa’s hands tightened and her round eyes glowed up at the older woman from in between a fluffy hat on her head, and a thick Hufflepuff scarf wrapped around her neck.

So, she hadn’t quite mustered the courage to skate on her own yet, but her small feet were moving in some semblance of a skating pattern, which Elsa considered a win for the 6 year old. Elsa looked up at a group of teenage boys that skated by, smiling at the way they bantered and jostled each other. The ice rink was being attended abundantly this time of year, with the holidays just around the corner. When she glanced at the side of the rink, she spotted her brother-in-law and the manager of the rink, Kristoff, hanging festive garland and odd reindeer made out of paper crafts around the perimeter of the rink. He waved at her when she caught his eye and pointed at his watch.

Elsa looked up at the red LED clock at the top of the ice rink that read 5:00. Kristoff was right. Her lesson was over and they needed to leave for dinner soon. She peered at her young student again and announced that their time was up. She saw something like relief flash in the girl’s eyes. Elsa bent down carefully to girl’s height.

“Hey, I think you did super well today.” She was doing her best to channel Anna’s comforting and motherly tone that she had with her own child. “You’re making progress _really_ fast.”

“Really?” asked the girl, unsure.

Elsa nodded enthusiastically at her. “Absolutely.” She tapped her on the tip of her pink nose and the girl smiled at her. Elsa stood up straight again. “Let’s skate to the side of the rink together. I think I see your parents over there already,” Elsa pointed. Hand in hand, she brought the girl off the ice. She shook hands with the parents and exchanged the usual pleasantries like wishing them a nice weekend and happy holidays.

Elsa was rolling her shoulders, sitting on a wooden bench when Kristoff plopped down on the bench next to her. “How are the lessons going?”

She answered as she untied her skates, “Good! Some students learn faster than others. But most want to advance to the jumps and toe loops immediately without realizing the foundation takes just as much work.” She sighed, removing the skates. “In fact, I had a 12 year old boy quit yesterday because he said skating was ‘too boring’,” Elsa said making air quotes with her fingers.

“Hey, you know that’s not your fault, right? I see you out there- you’re so patient and motivating with all the-”

Elsa put her hand on his shoulder to stop him. “I appreciate it, Kristoff. But you know I don’t take it personally.” She tied the skates to her bag and stood up. “I don’t know about you but I’m ready to see what my sister made us for dinner.”

Kristoff took that as his cue to drop the subject of ice skating completely and they walked side by side out the door to the car.

Elsa hadn’t meant to cut Kristoff off when he had just been trying to be nice. But there was a little paranoid voice in her head that couldn’t stop telling her that everyone was secretly pitying her. It was a voice that had started small but had grown and grown in volume since her injury last year that had effectively ended her professional figure skating career. It wasn’t unheard of to retire from competitive skating by the age of 26, but Elsa had strongly hoped that she would still be competing in her 30s. Deep down, she knew that people were just doing their best to help her transition from skating to coaching and there was no reason to shut them out from her feelings. But _knowing_ that didn’t make it easier to do.

.

.

.

“Elsa, could you make some ice for the water?” she heard Anna say. Elsa waved her hand and conjured a group of ice cubes in the pitcher of water on the table without looking up from her food.

“Thank you... _So_ ,” Anna said in between bites of roast beef with strong emphasis. “How was your date last week?” she asked Elsa, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

Elsa rolled her eyes. Yes, the only thing worse than being a 26 year old retired athlete was being a _single_ 26 year old retired athlete. With her 27th birthday only days away, Anna had taken it into her hands to find Elsa “the one” by setting her up on dates. So far, her attempts had been futile.

To add insult to injury, literally, Elsa’s 5 year relationship with her previous girlfriend had ended at the same time as her competitive career.

Aurora was one of the most beautiful women Elsa had ever laid her eyes on. And at the beginning, she had been everything Elsa had wanted. Bursting on the scene in the figure skating world and having her girlfriend to bring to parties, meet-ups, and the competitive circuit made Elsa feel like… well, a champion, in every sense of the word. Aurora’s well-mannered personality and her jaw-dropping photogenic qualities had made her the perfect companion for Elsa to navigate the limelight with. But when the clout had started to fade and Elsa’s career got engrossed in bigger and bigger events, Elsa had come to realize some uncomfortable truths about her relationship.

They hadn’t had anything to talk about. Aurora was pretty but Elsa hadn’t felt like they were matched… intellectually. They had even stopped being ‘ _intimate_ ’ towards the end of their relationship and all of the drawbacks had made Elsa unhappy. Elsa knew her retirement was ushering in a new phase in her life and she decided their relationship had run its course. The fact that, even after five years, Elsa wasn't brave enough to tell Aurora about her powers had been very telling too.

However, she hadn’t been prepared for Aurora to cry her eyes out when she broke up with her gasping out between sobs, “ _but_ _we have everything”_ and _“I thought you loved me.”_ Their apparent incompatibility hadn’t been as obvious to Aurora. And thus their fate had been sealed. Even when breaking up the relationship, each other’s expectations had shot by each other, not like star-crossed stars, but more like two planets from completely different galaxies.

“Elsa? Did you hear what I asked?”

Elsa’s attention snapped back to her sister and she shook her head. “Sorry, sorry. I heard you, I just got lost in thought.” She took a small sip of her red wine. “The date was… fine?”

Anna tipped her head back and groaned. Her 2 year old son, Felix, imitated her from his high chair. Kristoff tried to follow the boy’s mouth aimlessly with a spoonful of peas that Felix deftly avoided.

“Fine?? That’s all you have to say?” When Elsa just shrugged, Anna put her fork down and regarded her sister seriously. “Come on, that girl Belle was nice! You said you wanted someone smarter, so I got you a librarian. What was wrong with her?” Anna inquired in her usual, chattery manner.

Elsa made a face, “I didn’t say there was something _wrong_ with her. She _was_ nice! I just- I don’t know. She didn’t… excite me.” Elsa took a big bite to avoid having to elaborate.

Anna didn’t let up, however. “Ohhh, oh oh oh, I see what you’re saying,” she answered, waving her fork at Elsa. “There wasn’t a spark! _”_

Elsa shrugged again. Romance really wasn’t her department. “Something like that?”

Anna quickly leaned back in her chair (narrowly dodging a green pea that flew in her direction) and tapped her chin with her finger. She snapped her fingers, coming to a conclusion.

“I’ve got the perfect girl for you.”

Elsa had heard _that line_ before. The past 3 dates, in fact. She was starting to doubt Anna’s suitability as a matchmaker.

As if reading her mind, Anna declared, “I _know_ , I know what you’re thinking, but this time I really, really mean it. I just want you to find someone, Elsa. Someone who's good for you. Someone who you can grow old with and get a pet together with and maybe even babysit with,” she said the last part under her breath, jerking her head in the direction of Felix and Kristoff. Elsa giggled at the overturned bowl of peas and Kristoff’s shaking head in his hands.

Elsa halted any protests at Anna on her tongue, because she knew that her sister was right. She _wanted_ all of the things that Anna had named. To try to accomplish this, Elsa had let her sister take some liberty with her love life since her breakup. Truth be told, she didn’t trust herself quite yet to take the reins again. Elsa hadn’t intended to hurt her ex-girlfriend like she had. She didn’t want to cause someone pain again, even if it had been necessary at the time.

Elsa nodded. “Okay. I’m open to whatever you have in mind.”

“Great! I’ll ask her if she wants your number.”

“What’s her name??”

“ _Honeymaren_.”

_Day 1_

That was a peculiar name, thought Elsa as she waited at the rendezvous point for her date. But there was something lovely about it too, Elsa decided. Anna had suggested that Elsa should have her date at the ice skating rink in the park. She had said something about the ice stadium being too stale and ‘unromantic’ for a date. Anna was right, which she often was these days. Seemingly, motherhood had made her wise. The glowing Christmas lights draped on the trees and the hot chocolate booth created a specialatmosphere.

“Hey? Are you Elsa?”

Elsa turned around. In front of her stood a wonderfully beautiful woman in a black leather jacket and beanie, who had the longest brown braid Elsa had ever seen on someone. Short bangs poked out from under the hat and Elsa felt herself blush as she took in the woman’s freckles, full lips, and the pair of ice skates that hung around her neck, tied at the shoelaces.

“You’re Elsa, right? Anna’s sister?” Honeymaren asked becoming unsure at Elsa’s silence.

Elsa forced herself out of her reverie. “Yes! That’s me.” Her hand shot out. “You must be Honeymaren.”

The other woman took her hand gingerly and shook it. “My friends call me Maren.”

Elsa’s inner cringing at herself and her nervousness faded away at the friendly smile that Maren was giving her. Her contentment increased tenfold when they stepped onto the ice together, finding herself in her second home. Elsa noticed that Maren was quite comfortable and brisk on the ice too, something that alleviated her. It was already a good start if they could share something that was so important to Elsa.

Elsa skated backwards, facing her date, and skating with ease.

“So, how do you know Anna?”

“I know her through Kristoff. I met him when we were kids. His family is Sami and mine is Northuldra. Our paths crossed from time to time during celebrations or festivals. I was at their wedding too.”

Elsa’s eyes grew wide at hearing that. “You were at their wedding?? Why didn’t I see you there?”

Maren smirked, “We weren’t introduced. I remember you, though. You wore that long cerulean dress.”

Elsa blushed again. “Oh, yeah... I did.” If Maren remembered her _dress_ then she surely also remembered her ex-girlfriend who had been by her side the whole day. That thought made Elsa feel awkward.

“You were a sight to behold,” continued Maren.

“Thank you.” Elsa sheepishly tucked her hair behind her ear.

They weaved and wound around each other seamlessly as they skated and talked. Maren told her about the farm that her family owned and the reindeer that they bred and raised there. She told her about her younger brother and they bonded over their shared experience of being the ‘older sister’. Maren nudged Elsa with her elbow whenever she made a joke and when Elsa prodded her back, the woman didn’t teeter on the ice at all. She was upright, steady, and stable, while still being full of mirth and levity. Maren didn’t give her the impression of a prim and proper lady like Belle. And she didn’t remind her of the sweet, yet frivolous air that surrounded Aurora. Rather, the silver piercings in Maren’s ears, the ring around her bottom lip, the ever present smirk on her face, and the playful twinkle in her bronze, honey molten eyes made Elsa think of something new. It made her _feel_ something new. It made her feel like walking on a tight-rope, her breaths short and clamped in her throat, while knowing the only direction she could possibly go was forwards.

_Day 15_

Elsa was sitting in the car with Anna and Felix, having just picked them up from daycare. The boy was in the booster seat, dozing away after a busy afternoon with other kids.

Anna begged, “Tell me, Elsaaa! You haven’t said a word about your date with Maren yet. And _don’t_ tell me it was fine or else I’ll explode.”

Elsa couldn’t help but smile amusedly at Anna. She hadn’t kept Anna in the dark because she didn’t want her to know about it. She was just afraid. Talking about it would make it real. And well… she didn’t want to get excited about it only to mess it up.

Elsa bit her lip. “We… had a really good time actually.”

From the side of her eye, she could see her sister react to the news. She was smiling so hard that her cheeks were puffing out and she was covering her mouth with her hands as she squealed.

“There was a spark?” Anna squeaked out, too excited to contain herself.

“There was a spark,” Elsa confirmed. “We’ve been meeting up throughout the week and-”

“WHAT?” Anna jumped in her seat and jovially slapped Elsa on the arm. “You have?? Oh my gosh,” Anna melted against the leather of the seat, covering her heart with her hands, her legs excitedly bouncing up and down. “I’m so happy for you Elsa…”

Elsa resisted rolling her eyes at her sister’s sappiness. “Oh, relax. It’s not like me and her are together or anything. We’re just… seeing each other...”

_Day_ _32_

“Anna, don’t freak out but, I asked Maren to be my girlfriend-”

“ _WHAT?”_ Elsa shook her head as she heard her sister yell on the other end of the phone. _“What did she say??!”_

“She said yes!”

“ _AAAAEEEEEaaaahhhhhhhhh!!”_ Anna squealed.

Elsa held her phone away from her ear, her sister’s screaming blaring through the speaker.

“ _I’m so happyyyyy!!”_

Elsa quirked an eyebrow. Was Anna… sniffling??

“Anna?” she said worriedly. “Are you crying?”

“ _My whole life…”_ Anna sniffed. “ _I’ve been the romantic. But you- you were never obsessed with love. You were the only person that convinced me not to marry that jackass, Hans. At first, I just thought you were just being hard-headed about him. But, thank God, Elsa. I’m just glad I could do something for you. You deserve someone-”_

“Anna, I barely know her still!! You’re acting like I asked her to marry me.”

 _“I know, I know, okay?”_ Her sniffles had subsided. _“I just have a good feeling about her. I’m glad you trusted me on this one.”_

“I am too. _”_ Elsa smiled against the phone in her hand.

_Day 80_

“ _Too hard,”_ complained Maren.

“Oh, so you like it softer?” asked Elsa.

“Most of the time, yes.”

“Good to know…… And now?”

“ _Too soft!”_

Elsa leapt up from the mattress. “How are you so sensitive?” she asked her girlfriend.

Maren sprung up from the bed too. “I just know what I’m used to!”

Elsa spread out her arms, gesturing around them. “We’ve tried almost every mattress in this store! There has to be at least one that you like.”

“Exactly, we’ve tried _almost_ all of them.” She grabbed Elsa by the hand, pulling her to the next mattress. “There’s still a chance that this is the one.”

They both lay down on the final sample mattress in the store. Elsa side-eyed Maren for her reaction. She shifted this way. And that way. She turned on her side. She rolled onto her front. The suspense was going to kill Elsa.

“Well?? How is it?”

Maren rolled on her back again before a satisfied smile spread across her face. “I like it.”

Elsa’s head dropped back onto the mattress in relief. “Thank goodness…” She started to sit up. “Great, let’s get the clerk and then we can pay and get out of-”

“ _Hold on_ ,” said Maren, catching Elsa by the wrist. She pulled the woman back down onto the bare mattress, next to her. “Do _you_ like it?”

“Do _I_ like it?” asked Elsa. Her brow furrowed. “Why do you ask?”

Maren lightly shrugged her shoulders. She looked away before quickly looking back to Elsa. “Well, I just don’t want to get a mattress that you hate.”

“Why does it matter? It’s not for me, it’s for you,” Elsa said dumbfounded.

Maren almost rolled her eyes. “ _Yes,_ for the most part. But… I don’t know. We’re _together_. You spend time at my place. I spend time at yours.” She restrained herself from saying too much like, _it could be your mattress one day too._ It was too soon for that. Far too early to even think such things. “I just want you to be comfortable… with me,” finished Maren.

“Oh, Maren…” Elsa took in the woman before her. Her lovely, thoughtful Maren. She leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the lips. “I think being with you is amazing. Wonderful. Fantastic. On this mattress, I mean.” Elsa’s heart fluttered when Maren smirked at her.

“Great, then, let’s get it. Since… we both like it so much.”

Elsa smiled to herself and followed after the other woman as they searched for an employee in the store.

_Day 154_

Elsa had never used her powers to cheat. She wouldn’t even know how to accomplish that. It wasn’t the ice that moved but rather, the skater. But maybe in some way, her affinity to the ice and skating it came about because of her magical nature. Because of this and many, _many_ other reasons, nobody except Anna and Kristoff knew about her magical powers.

Nobody… even Maren.

Elsa sat in the bathtub full of warm water. Colorful flower petals that she had scattered in the water floated on the surface, from which a pleasant, sweet smell wafted. Elsa’s thoughts spun in her head. She had had a tense conversation with Anna earlier that day and she needed the bath to unwind.

_“Just tell her about your powers! It will be fine. Maren loves yo-”_

_“I can’t!! What will she think of me? I can’t even explain why I am this way.”_

Elsa’s head sunk lower into the water, covering her chin with soapy bubbles. She hadn’t meant to lose her temper at Anna but what she had been suggesting was out of the question. It was too soon.

Elsa closed her eyes and held her breath. She pulled her hand out of the water and put it against the cool surface of the glassy bathroom tiles on the wall. As she released the breath, icy frost started spreading out from her hand, sparkling with individual flakes and frozen patterns, moving across the tile. She felt the temperature in the room drop and could sense the material properties of the tile transform. The ceramic altered and converted from the outside in, turning into pure, frozen ice. Elsa shuddered. She didn’t know how it was possible. _It wasn’t possible._ Not scientifically. If she hadn’t known that Anna and Kristoff had seen her powers too, she would think she was insane and that she needed to be checked for hallucinations.

Elsa startled when she heard her front door open and close. Maren had entered with her spare key.

“Elsa??!?”

“In here!” she called out.

When she removed her hand from the wall and dropped it back in the warm water, a sizzling sound released as steam rose from her submerged, ice cold hand. The frost receded and the ceramic tile returned as if Elsa had never done anything to convert its properties.

Maren opened the door and stood still in the doorway, stunned into place at the view.

Elsa slyly grinned. “Why, hello. Care to join me?” she asked as she gestured with her hand at the bath. “There’s room for two.”

Maren didn’t waste a second, throwing her clothes off one by one. Elsa laughed as Maren’s shirt flew at her face. The water sloshed around as Maren climbed in before gasping.

“Elsa! This water is freezing cold!! How long have you been sitting here like this??”

Elsa quickly turned the knob for the hot water.

“Sorry! I guess cold things don’t really bother me,” she said panicking slightly at how she hadn’t noticed that the temperature of the water had changed so much.

Maren’s teeth chattered, her arms hugged around herself. “Y-you call t-this c-cold? I-it’s f-freezing.” She jumped out of the water. “I can’t do this. Call me when the bath won’t turn me into an ice cube!” She grabbed a towel and threw it around herself, jogging to the heater in the living room.

Elsa watched her go.

If Elsa couldn’t understand her powers, how could she expect Maren to? It wasn’t the right time to tell her. Only, she wondered if there would _ever_ be a right time?

_Day 303_

_Elsa was sprinting through the forest again. She zipped by the same orange, red, and yellow autumn leaves. This time she followed the water horse out of the grove and onto stony, jagged rocks. The earth seemed to have noses and hands and feet, laying down in the sun?_

_She understood where the water horse was leading her when she saw a familiar figure scaling the cliffside using pick axes as climbing tools._

_It was the same woman as before. She couldn’t see her in detail because of the distance between them, but Elsa recognized her. The woman’s braid swayed back and forth as she moved her limbs in sync up the mountain._

_Suddenly, the woman cried out. Elsa watched in horror as the stone crumbled away under the woman’s axes. She fell from the cliffside with a terrified yell._

_Elsa reacted quickly, without thinking. She stretched her hand out and willed her magical powers to do something. Wispy snowflakes swirled out from her fingertips and a pile of soft snow formed under the falling woman._

Elsa woke up just when the woman was going to collide with the magical heap of snow. She gasped as her eyes opened, chest moving up and down, alarmed.

“Elsa?” mumbled Maren, half asleep. “I heard you gasp. Are you okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I just had a strange dream,” Elsa’s voice broke around the last word. She put her arm around Maren, cuddling her close.

Maren murmured, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, no. Go back to sleep.”

Satisified, and with her worries assuaged, Maren sunk back into a slumber in Elsa’s embrace.

_Day 371_

Anna paced back and forth in the room, not slowing her stride despite her heavy, pregnant belly. Elsa watched her with a frown on her face.

“I thought you would be happy for me?” accused Elsa quietly.

Anna finally stopped and threw her hands up, a pained expression on her face. “ _I am!_ Trust me, Elsa, I am. I just can’t believe you got engaged without telling her!”

Elsa left the couch, standing rigid in front of her sister. “Keep your voice down,” she pleaded, casting a glance at a different room where Maren was playing with Felix and Kristoff. “Why does it matter if I tell her before or after we get married? You keep saying that she’ll love me no matter what. So, if that’s true, then why does it matter when she finds out?”

Anna dragged her hands down her face. “It matters because she _loves_ you. She deserves to know! If you’re gonna spend both of your lives together, then she should know this about you. Even if you can’t explain it. Just show her-”

“Show her??”

“Yes!! Wave your hand and put some ice cubes in her drink or something. You can ease her into it slowly. But you can’t marry her if you don’t trust her.”

“I do trust her!”

“ _Do you_??!” Anna demanded back.

They both paused, finally taking a breath for the first time since their argument started. They had had this discussion before. Time and time again, Elsa always left, closing the door on the conversation.

Anna wouldn’t let her do that this time. “I know you’re afraid to tell her. I know you think this can ruin everything. And if that’s true, then wouldn’t you rather know now?”

“I’d rather not know it at all.” Elsa scowled and bit the inside of her cheek.

“Are you saying you’ll _never_ tell her??”

“No! I just- no. I’m not saying that...” Elsa put her hands up, thinking hard.

“Tell me what?”

Elsa and Anna jumped at the sound of Maren’s voice, having just emerged from the next room.

“You’re talking about me, right?” She edged closer and closer to the sisters, confusion in her voice. “I heard some of what you were saying…”

Elsa’s eyes widened to the size of saucers as she looked to Anna for an excuse. Anna looked between Elsa and Maren, eyes darting back and forth, brain short circuiting at the tension in the room. She couldn’t think of a justification for their conversation that was anything but the truth.

So, she bailed. “I’m going to go see if Kristoff and Felix need anything.” She shuffled away hastily, with one last apologetic look to Elsa.

Then Elsa was left alone with her fiancée.

“Elsa?” implored Maren.

Elsa sunk into the cushions of the couch, her head in her hands.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” was all Elsa could come up with.

Maren scoffed. “Yeah, _obviously_.” She looked at the other woman in disbelief. “Elsa, the longer you won’t say anything, the more worried I’m going to get. Just tell me what it is.” She waited with bated breath.

Elsa shook her head. “I can’t.” It came out so quiet that Maren barely heard it.

“Are you lying to me about something?”

“Not exactly-”

“Did you cheat on me?”

“No- _I would never_!” Elsa looked up, stunned, at Maren.

“Then what’s going on?! Elsa, I have no idea. Please just tell me. How can I marry you when I know that you’re keeping something from me??” Maren asked helplessly.

Before she could stop herself, Elsa blurted out, “Maybe this is happening too fast.”

Maren stepped back, aghast and numb as if she had been shocked with electricity. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I shouldn’t have asked you to marry me before I was ready…”

“You’re not ready to get married?” asked Maren with a small voice.

Elsa got up and turned away from her, not being able to take seeing the pain that swam across Maren’s features. Her arms curled around herself and she controlled her magic from pouring out and freezing the whole room.

Maren’s feet took her to the door, her mind not even thinking anymore. Her hand rested on the doorknob.

“Don’t come home unless you have an explanation for this, Elsa.” She cast one last sad glance at the woman before leaving the house.

Utterly exhausted, Elsa sank to the floor as tears started to fall from her eyes.

She had ruined it. She had ruined the best thing in her life because she was too afraid.

The floorboards underneath her froze as the temperature dropped well below zero. The windows glazed over with a sheet of jagged ice as the frost inched up to the ceiling. The only thing that was able to stop her spiralling mind was the sound of her name and her sister’s arms wrapping tightly around her shaking body.

_Day 372_

_Elsa watched the woman fall from the cliffside with a terrified yell._

_She reacted quickly, without thinking. She stretched her hand out and willed her magical powers to do something. Wispy snowflakes swirled out from her fingertips and a pile of soft snow formed under the falling woman. The woman fell right into it._

_Elsa ran to her to check on her wellbeing. To her relief the woman was moving around, trying to dig herself out of the fresh powder. She successfully rolled out, her hat falling over her face, as Elsa came to a stop next to her. Elsa offered her hand to her. The woman took it gladly and repositioned the hat onto her head, giving Elsa her first good look of the woman’s face._

_In front of her stood the most wonderfully beautiful woman she had ever seen._

_“Thanks for the save, snowbird.” The woman wound her arms around Elsa and kissed her on the cheek._

Elsa awoke with a start. For so long, the dreams had been happening without making any sense. Most aspects of them still didn’t make sense, taking into account the various spirits and creatures that weren’t of this world.

But the woman who Elsa had dreamed of chasing over and over was Maren. It shouldn’t have surprised her so much but the dream felt like a punch in the gut. It was like her inner, subconscious voice was screaming at her.

In her dream she had _saved_ Maren with her powers. And Maren had _thanked_ her for it.

Realization came crashing down on Elsa and she sprung out of the bed in Anna and Kristoff’s guest bedroom. She tugged on a pair of blue jeans and hastily threw Anna’s _Wellesley_ sweatshirt over her head that she had borrowed and never returned. She almost made it out the front door when she realized that Maren had taken the car. Without thinking about it, Elsa grabbed Anna’s keys and dove into her sister’s car.

“Wake up, Honey. Please wake up.” Elsa shook her girlfriend’s shoulder in their bedroom.

“Don’t you ‘honey’ me,” was the response. Maren grumbled and pulled the covers closer over her body.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” said Elsa as she climbed onto the bed. She kneeled next to Maren. “I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”

At that, Maren cracked an eye open at her. Seeming to believe her, she slinked out of the blanket and sat back against the headboard. “I’m listening.” She yawned. “This better be good.”

Elsa reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on. Maren groaned and flinched at the sudden light.

“Sorry!” Elsa said again awkwardly. A part of her felt deceased when she noticed Maren’s eyes were as red and puffy as hers were. She folded her hands in her lap and she took a deep breath. “There’s no easy way to tell you this. And I avoided talking about it for so long because I was afraid of how you would react. And then it got to the point where I had to say something or else I was a bad partner and that made me clam up even more out of shame.”

Elsa sighed. “I have some… unusual abilities that nobody really knows about...”

Maren regarded her blankly, quirking an eyebrow.

“ _Abilities_?”

Elsa looked down at the sheets as she tapped into her magic. She heard, rather than saw, the sharp intake of breath that came from Maren as she watched it start snowing in their bedroom. Maren reached her hand out to catch one of the flakes and it melted on her skin. She watched how their fuzzy throw pillows on the bed caught the snowflakes and they shimmered in the light from the lamp. She looked back at Elsa who met her eyes when she sensed her gaze.

“You can… make it snow?”

“Something like that…” She cleared her throat, knowing that this was the hard part of her reveal. _The explanation._ “I was born with the power to manipulate the world through ice and snow.” Elsa stopped the flurry in their room. She reached out to the abandoned cup of tea on the bedside table. “I can make this water freeze.”

Maren’s wide eyes blinked at her.

“You can do what now??”

The flurrying in the room had been a strange sight to see. And Maren had wondered if it was a trick of the light. But when the liquid in the mug froze with a crack she nearly leapt out of the bed.

“ _Whaa_ \- _How did you do that?!?”_ she exclaimed.

Unsure, yet amazed, she reached out and put a shaky finger to the ice in the glass, just to check that it was really, actually frozen.

“Oh my God, Elsa.” She tapped her finger against the ice, her nail making a clinking noise where it hit the solid, icy mass.

Elsa took Maren’s hand and put the cup back. “ _Nobody_ knows about this. Only Anna and Kristoff. Can you promise not to tell anyone? And can you forgive me for not telling you sooner?” Her voice softened at the end.

Still dazed, Maren nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I can do that. How is this possible?” Her voice petitioned for understanding.

“I’m not sure. Magic, I suppose. I was born with it.”

“Magic…” Maren mumbled, repeating her. She seemed to be deep in thought. “I’m trying to remember the stories that my aunt used to tell me. The ones passed down in the Northuldra. Many of them talk about magic. Of course, I never gave them much thought but now... since magic seems to be _real.”_ She covered her mouth with her hand as a second wave of astonishment hit her.

“Seems to be,” Elsa nodded at her. Repentant, she kissed their conjoined hands as she raised them to her lips.

“I’m so, so, so, so sorry,” she murmured into Maren’s skin. “I completely understand if you don’t want to marry me anymore. Not even for the magic thing but for lying to you-“

“ _Hey_ \- “ Maren gazed deeply into her eyes. “I still want to do this. I mean- you made a mistake. You had a _big_ secret. At first I was angry... but I can understand how afraid you were.”

Relieved, Elsa collapsed into Maren’s side, wrapping her arms around the waist of the woman who was, _thankfully_ , still her fiancée.

“You can?” asked Elsa, her heart soaring.

“Of course.” Maren placed an arm around Elsa, stroking her thumb over the sweater material. “I may not have known about your powers but I know _you_.” She put her hand over Elsa’s heart. “You can be kind of a fortress. I’m glad you came home instead of running away.”

Embarrassed but with her heart full of love, Elsa rested her forehead against Maren’s. She took a deep breath before saying, “Honeymaren Naturra, I promise to love and hold you for as long as you want me to, for as long as you’ll have me by your side, and for as long as I live.” She pulled away and brushed some strands of Maren’s hair behind her ear. “I vow to spend the rest of my lifetime being truthful and honest to you, knowing that we can accomplish more together through our bond than I could _ever_ accomplish alone.”

Maren gazed at her incredulously. “If you’re trying to marry me on the spot, I hate to say it but we need to call an officiant first,” she chuckled.

“I just want you to know that I mean it just as much today as I will on the actual day when we get married. I’m ready to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Maren smiled before leaning forward and capturing Elsa’s lips in a kiss. She slid her hand between their bodies and skirted her hand up the inside of Elsa’s sweater.

Elsa broke the kiss with a dazed and bleary look.

“I hope you weren’t planning on going back to sleep tonight,” teased Maren. She noticed Elsa’s eyes darkening with desire as she reconnected their lips. Maren almost groaned with pleasure when she felt Elsa’s tongue grazed over the ring around her bottom lip. Something ignited within her when Elsa sucked on it gently before reclaiming her mouth fully. Mare slid down from the headboard with Elsa positioning herself over the other woman fully.

Piece by piece, their clothes were discarded, being thrown haphazardly onto the floor. Elsa relished every touch from her love that graced her bare skin. Every kiss, from the dip of her navel to the top of her shoulder, imprinted in her mind. Maren’s hands scratched and gripped Elsa’s back, telling her that she loved this just as much as Elsa did.

Once their cravings had been subdued, and they lay there naked in each other’s embrace, Elsa let out a breath that she didn’t know she had been holding. It was a release, a symbol of the freedom she had finally granted to herself. She had finally shed off the fear that had corrupted her mind and crippled her ability to trust the people she loved unconditionally.

Maren’s skin was hot where she was pressed against Elsa and she suddenly had the unshakable thought that Maren had been able to handle the cold all along.

.

.

.

Epilogue

 **Anna 7:45am**  
Elsa, when were you going to  
tell me that you hijacked my car????

 **Anna  
** Since you were gone all night,  
I hope that means you smoothed  
things over with Maren?? ;) ;) ;)

 **Anna 8:00am  
** Elsa seriously I'm about to wake Felix  
up cuz I need to bring him to daycare.  
WHERE'S MY CAR

 **Elsa 8:22am  
** shit shit sorry  
I'll be right there

 **Elsa  
** And Maren and I made up! No more secrets

 **Anna 8:25am**  
I knew everything would be ok!

 **Anna**  
Soooo, no more ' _cold'_ shoulder  
from Maren, huh? (¬‿¬)

 **Anna**  
Glad she forgave you for your ' _slip up_ ' XD  
Get it?? As in, slipping on ice??

**Elsa 8:28am**   
_Anna_

**Anna 8:29am  
** Too soon????

 **Elsa 8:30am  
**........  
Guess you could say I'm not on  
'thin ice' anymore **  
**

 **Anna 8:30am  
** Good one (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that was a little weird but I really enjoyed writing it. Here’s some art I made related to it: https://lexathorn.tumblr.com/post/189693491102/elsa-honeymaren-%EA%88%8D%E1%B4%97%EA%88%8D  
> Thanks for all the prompts you guys commented! A proposal story has been pretty popular so far and I'm contemplating how I want to write that. I definitely want to go back to the Frozen universe from the movies after writing this modern fic.  
> Sorry about any spelling or grammatical errors that slipped through my proofreading.


	4. I'm taken and she is too (Soulmate AU 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soulmate AU where when you write something on your skin with pen/marker/whatever the hell you want, it will show up on your soulmates skin as well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how long this is. This prompt is one that I’ve always wanted to try!

“This is so unfair, father!” cried Anna falling backwards onto her bed in her shared bedroom with Elsa. Elsa stood next to their father at her desk where he was stuffing schoolbooks, notepads, and pens into a small blue bookbag. He closed it by the clasp at the front and knelt down to put the leather straps around his older daughter’s shoulders.

“I know you feel that way, Anna,” he said rising to his feet again. He sat down on the bed next to her and stroked the bangs over her forehead. Anna sharply pulled away and crossed her arms. 

Their father explained, “Your sister is older than you, Anna. She’s 6 now and needs to start going to school like all the other children.” Being a princess, Elsa was enrolled in the Arendelle Preparatory Day School, where Anna would eventually also be enrolled in, with other children from noble families. 

“Let me go with her,” begged Anna. “Pleeeaase.” 

“I’m awfully sorry, sweetheart. But I promise your sister will be back really soon,” replied the King with a gentle tap to Anna’s nose. “Say bye to your sister now.” 

Disgruntled, Anna slid off the bed and enveloped Elsa in a big hug. 

“Don’t you forget about me,” fussed Anna. “And when you’re playing with your dumb classmates just remember who your real _best friend_ is!”

Elsa hugged her sister back and over her shoulder she shared a warm smile with her father who was watching them with affection in his eyes. 

“How could I forget you, Anna?” asked Elsa. “I’ve been with you your whole life.”

“Except now that you’re leaving me for school,” Anna complained holding Elsa tighter. 

Agnarr gently split them apart. “Alright now.” He took Elsa’s hand in his bigger one and started leading her to the door. 

Elsa looked back at Anna and raised her hand to wave. 

“Bye Anna.”

“Bye Elsa! I love you! Make good choices!!” Anna pouted from where she plopped herself down on the floorboards. The bedroom door closed between them. 

Then, Elsa silently walked with her father. They exited the gates together and smiled pleasantly at the people they passed by, who all pointed at them in recognition. On the way, her father tried to cheer her up with stories and took a small detour to the harbor to wave with her at the ships that passed by in the water. 

When they reached the school they were ushered in by a teacher and led to the right classroom. When Elsa took her seat, she kept her head down, feeling the awestruck stares on her and her father drilling into her head. It wasn’t every day that the King of Arendelle walked into your classroom. 

Elsa watched her father exchange pleasantries with the teacher. Then, he distractedly lifted his left arm and pulled the cuff of his sleeve down as if to check a watch. He announced to the school teacher that he had to go attend a meeting with the Queen and with one last wave at Elsa, left the room. Elsa’s hand gravitated to her own sleeve. She wasn’t paying attention to the lesson that the teacher was starting as her mind wandered to the markings that she knew her parents shared. 

She remembered when she saw the phenomenon for the first time. At 3 years old, she had been leaning against her mother as she read a bedtime story. Elsa’s eyes followed the words on the page, not quite grasping them yet at her young age. Then, she noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye on her mother’s wrist and gasped. It startled Iduna for a second before she noticed the message herself and checked her wrist. 

_“Hot chocolate or tea, dear?”_

She took a pen from her front coat pocket and wrote back simply, “ _Tea, please.”_

Elsa gaped at the writing on her mother’s wrist and looked up at Iduna with questioning eyes. 

“It’s how your father and I talk to each other when we’re not together.” 

“Can I do that too?” asked Elsa. 

“You can. And one day, someone will write back. Like a pen pal.” Iduna smiled as she caressed her daughter’s cheek. 

_Like a pen pal_ , thought Elsa in the schoolroom as she took a pen and hovered it over the skin of her wrist. She could just write “hello” as a test to see if someone would actually write back. 

She hesitated, starting to wonder who her pen pal could be. They could be anyone from any land across the seas. She started to pull the pen away. She didn’t want to talk to someone without knowing who they were. What if it was someone from an enemy land? What if it was an old man with scratchy, white whiskers?? 

Elsa snapped herself out of her trance and directed her eyes back to the front of the classroom. She put the thoughts aside, pulling her sleeve down over her wrist. 

Elsa didn’t find school as terrible and boring as a lot of the other kids did. She liked learning and her parents told her she was smart all the time. Anna still hated it, simply because it left her playing by herself for 6 hours every day while Elsa was gone. 

Elsa was diligently copying the numbers on the chalkboard during math class one day when the skin on her arm started tickling. She tried to ignore it only for the tingling feeling to become bothersome. She pushed her sleeve back to scratch the area and then froze. On her skin, inky lines were appearing. They formed into diamonds with intricate shapes inside like circles, dashes, and points. Elsa furrowed her brow at them. The markings were nonsensical to her. 

And with all the things that were nonsensical to her…

She asked her mother about it. 

“Mother, I think my pen pal wrote to me,” said Elsa as she ran into the skirt of her mother’s dress, hugging her legs, inside the castle again. 

Iduna picked Elsa up into her arms and said, “Really? What did they say?”

“I don’t know,” whimpered Elsa. “I can’t understand it.”

“That’s okay.” She kissed her daughter on the forehead. “Sometimes, our pen pals come from different lands or cultures and they don’t speak Norwegian or English like we do in Arendelle.” 

So, Elsa’s suspicions had been right. Her pen pal could be anyone from anywhere. 

“Let me see.” She put Elsa down, knelt on the carpet, and reached to push Elsa’s sleeve out of the way.

Then Iduna gasped.

“What does it say?” asked Elsa, worried at the confusing look on her mother’s face. 

Iduna ran a finger down the markings on Elsa’s arm. 

She took a deep breath. “Your pen pal says hello. And that their name is Honey.” 

“Honey?” repeated Elsa quietly. 

Iduna stroked Elsa’s hair back, calmingly. “Isn’t that a lovely name?”

There was something in Iduna’s eyes that Elsa couldn’t quite identify. It looked something like pride and her eyes were shimmering brightly as if she was trying to imprint this moment into her mind forever. Then, something like sadness flashed across her mother’s face, which made Elsa hug her delicately. 

“Is something wrong?” she asked. 

“No. Nothing is wrong,” replied Iduna. She carefully tried to explain, “Everyone has a pen pal, Elsa. And nobody has the same person. Your pen pal is someone really special.”

“What makes them special??”

Iduna glanced up for a moment, thinking before she looked at Elsa again. “They live really, really far away. It might take a long time before you ever meet them.” 

“Oh.” Elsa looked down and peered at the ink on her arm again. 

Iduna squeezed her hand. “Do you want to write them a message in return?”

Elsa pouted dejectedly. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ll help you. We’ll do it together.” Then, Iduna pushed Elsa towards the study. At a table with documents and maps scattered all over it, she took a quill and dipped it in the ink. Elsa climbed up on the chair and put her arm on the table, presenting it to her mother. 

“I’m going to write ‘hello’.” When Elsa nodded for her to continue, Iduna drew a diamond with two circles inside, the ink feeling cool on Elsa’s skin. Then, Iduna rotated Elsa’s arm and on the blankness she wrote something longer with more complicated symbols. 

Slightly panicked, Elsa glanced at her mother, “What are you writing?”

“I told Honey that you’re sorry but you don’t know more words in their language.” She put the quill aside and then leaned down to look at Elsa seriously. 

“I want you to have fun with your pen pal. But you have to remember that you’re a princess first. You can’t tell your pen pal who you are or where you live. Do you understand?”

“But you said they live really far away-”

“I know, Elsa. But this is the way it has to be. It’s for your safety.” 

Elsa folded her hands in her lap and nodded. Chagrined, she complained, “But how am I supposed to communicate with them?”

“What if you drew them some pictures?” Iduna took the quill and offered it to her daughter. 

Elsa took it somewhat tentatively. Then she put the tip of it to her palm and drew a snowman with stick arms. 

Iduna and Elsa gazed at the drawing, wondering if a response would come. Just when Iduna was going to pull Elsa away, Elsa exclaimed.

“Look!” 

A series of lines dragged across her skin next to the snowman. Elsa grinned up at her mother when the snowflake drawing finished taking form. 

Iduna returned her smile and touched their foreheads together. 

“I think you two will understand each other just fine.” 

Elsa was 8 years old when she started hearing her parents whispering in secluded corners of the castle. She cowered behind a flower pot as she tried to listen in on the voices of her mother and father echoing down the hall from the open library. 

“Agnarr, do you hear what I’m saying? There are still people in the Enchanted Forest. They’ve been… all this time!” 

She couldn’t hear her father’s reply but her mother’s next words were clear as day. 

“And what about your daughter? What about Elsa?” 

Elsa shrunk into herself. They were talking about her. Whatever their conversation was about, it most likely had to do with her powers. 

Like all of their conversations about Elsa did.

Then, Iduna said something that Elsa didn’t understand. 

“Her _soulmate_ is there, Agnarr!” 

That evening, Elsa sat with Anna on her bed feeling frustrated and confused. Anna was playing with two horse figurines, racing them against each other across the blanket. 

“It’s a close one, ladies and gentleman. Swift Wind is leading, miles ahead of the pack. But, wait! Here comes Stormy the Appaloosa. Can it be possible? Stormy the Appaloosa charges forward and takes the win! Defeating the three time champion!” Anna threw the figurines up and flopped onto her back, giggling to herself. 

Elsa wasn’t paying attention at all. 

Anna noticed this and looked up at her, “Hey.” She poked her sister’s face. “What’s the matter with you?” 

“Anna… do you know what a soulmate is?” 

Anna took in a sharp, big breath before responding. 

“Do _I_ know what a _soulmate_ is???” She sat up and dramatically clasped her hands together. “ _Of course,_ I know what a soulmate is. A soulmate is the love of your life! The person of your dreams!” 

Elsa furrowed her brow. “The love of your life?”

“Yeah! You know! ‘ _The_ _one’_ ,” Anna said dreamily. 

Elsa’s face scrunched up uncomfortably. She didn’t like romantic love stories or playing boyfriend and girlfriend with her dolls like Anna did. _So, that’s what her parents had been talking about_ , thought Elsa disappointed. 

“I thought I heard mother and father talking about my ‘soulmate’ today,” said Elsa, voicing her thoughts. “How could they know about someone that I don’t even know?”

“What do you mean you don’t know your soulmate?” balked Anna. She pointed at Elsa’s arm, “You talk to Honey every day!” 

Elsa quickly drew her arm in, holding it with her other hand. “What?”

“Honey is your soulmate!” exclaimed Anna. “Has nobody told you this before?” Elsa shook her head. “Oh, brother,” said Anna exasperated, collapsing onto the bed again. “I write to my soulmate every day but I never get a reply.” Suddenly, she jumped up again enthusiastically. “Hey, do you wanna play Enchanted Forest??” 

Elsa had zoned out. She couldn’t help but feel conflicted at what Anna had told her. She wanted to push the information away from her mind, not knowing exactly what it meant to have a soulmate or have that soulmate potentially be another girl like her. 

“ _Please, Elsa_?” 

Anna’s voice in her ear and her face pressed up against hers finally brought her attention back. 

“Okay. Fine. Let’s play Enchanted Forest.” 

They scrambled onto the floor and Elsa created a playset out of snow that included dragons, trolls, fairies, and a castle. When they were almost finished playing, their father and mother came in to wish them good night. Only, Anna begged their father to tell them about the time he visited an Enchanted Forest and he gave in to her wishes. They huddled close to their mother as he recounted the story of the mystical forest, the horrendous battle that ensued, and the mist that dropped over the forest, still existent to that day. If Elsa had heard her parents correctly, then her soulmate had something to do with the forest and she worried for the person that littered her arm with scribbled drawings of reindeer and mountains. She looked to her mother throughout her father’s retelling, but her mother’s face revealed nothing. 

After the story, Elsa wasn’t able to fall asleep. But that didn’t matter when her sister slinked to her side and playfully whispered… 

“Do you wanna build a snowman?” 

.

.

.

Honeymaren was 8 years old when her soulmate stopped responding to her drawings. She looked at the evergreen tree that she had drawn down the length of her arm three days ago. Other than the tree, her arm remained blank without any additions to the drawing from her soulmate. Honeymaren had even refused to wash until she knew the message had been received, but after 3 days, Yelana was yanking her by her coat to the river to finally have a bath. 

“Yelana, I’m confused,” she grumbled as she got dragged along. “I haven’t heard from her in days!” 

Yelana adjusted her hold so that she was giving Honeymaren a side hug as they walked together. Comfortingly she said, “There could be many explanations for your friend’s silence. They could be on a trip with no writing tools. They could be training hard for a trial with no time to send a message to you.” Then she tickled Honeymaren’s side, “Or maybe they lost their arm!”

“Yelana!” Honeymaren cried. “That’s not funny! And it’s a she, not a they.” 

Yelana quirked an eyebrow at her. “How do you know that?”

“No boy could draw flowers as pretty as she does,” replied Honeymaren. 

For a second, Yelana gazed affectionately and tenderly at the young girl with a knowing look. 

“What?” Honeymaren muttered unamused.

“Nothing, dear,” replied Yelana as she resumed her tugging on Honeymaren’s arm to bring her to the river. 

By the time that Honeymaren was 18 years old, she was convinced that her soulmate was dead. It had been ten years since the last time her soulmate had made contact with her through ink markings. The lack of communication made her sad in ways she couldn’t fully express in words. The loss of her soulmate meant not only the loss of her friend, but also the loss of the life they potentially could have had together, granted if they had met one day. She didn’t even remember the last message that her soulmate had written to her. She hadn’t thought to memorize it at the time, having not known that it would be the last. 

Honeymaren had figured out that her soulmate wasn’t anyone in the Enchanted Forest. She hoped that one day the mist would lift and she would be able to venture out in search of the girl who once drew lilies and periwinkles on her arm. She had to try to find her if she could or at least find out what had happened to her… 

By the time that Anna was 15 years old, she was convinced that she didn’t have a soulmate. She wrote a message every day for years only to never get one back. Either her soulmate was ignoring her on purpose or…

Her soulmate didn’t exist. 

She was an unlucky soul. She was hopelessly romantic, yet her destiny was to not share markings with anyone. At first, she just thought that fate was mocking her. By the time that Anna was 15 and her parents tragically perished at sea, she began to think that it was cruel. 

Anna gripped her cloak tighter around herself as she knocked in that familiar pattern on Elsa’s door. 

“Elsa. Please, I know you’re in there.”

Elsa sat against the door, knees to her chest, arms wrapped around herself. She listened to her sister’s muffled voice asking to be let in. And for the thousandth time, Elsa didn’t open the door. They sat back to back for what seemed like hours with only the wooden slab of a door between them. Just when Elsa had thought that Anna had already left and she just hadn’t noticed it, she began to hear shuffling outside and footsteps that were walking away. Elsa’s head dropped down onto her knees and her throat tightened. A strangled sob escaped her lips, her lungs shook with the force of air that they expelled. She had stopped questioning a long time ago if it was really necessary to lock Anna out. Now, it was the shame that kept her buckled in place, heart closed. If she listed all the people that she loved, Anna was the only person left that was either still giving her a chance or still alive to offer one and Elsa couldn’t even be there for her when she really needed it. 

When they _both_ really needed it.

And yet, there was one other person who might still give her a chance. 

Elsa leaned back and raised her hand. Slowly, she pulled the glove off of it. She gazed at the palm of her hand, unmarked, blank, and bare. Her soulmate still wrote things occasionally but she always missed it because of the gloves that covered her hands constantly. Elsa stood and walked to her desk. There, for the first time in years, she grabbed a pen and put it to her skin. 

On the palm of her hand, she drew a simple diamond with two circles inside of it. She cupped her hands and stared at the symbol that her mother had taught her all those years ago. For the first time in a long time, she reached out to someone. 

Honeymaren sat at the fire with the other members of her village. She relished in the moment, watching a wine skin get passed around the circle and the kids getting sent to bed by their parents. She was fiddling with a stick in her hands, peeling the bark off of it, when the palm of her hand itched. 

She was laughing at something funny her brother said next to her when she moved to scratch the spot, only to freeze like a statue, not even breathing anymore, when she saw it.

“ _Hello_.”

Her jaw dropped, shock written all over her features. Her grip on the stick went slack and it fell from her hand. She started to breathe again, shallowly and flatly. She stretched out her fingers, displaying her hand fully to the light of the fire, daring to investigate if her eyes were playing a trick on her. She traced the drawing on her skin with her pinky and determined that it was, in fact, legitimate. 

Hours seemed to go by when it had actually only been minutes as Elsa ardently stared at the palm of her hand. She finally relaxed and lowered herself exhaustedly onto her sheets, not even bothering to cover herself, when a duplicate of her message appeared. 

“ _Hello_.”

.

.

.

Elsa noted that after her greeting was returned, her soulmate had hastily scribbled a dozen glyphs on their arm, probably hoping that Elsa had learned their language in the time that she had been silent. Or they were at least trying to communicate that they were excited to hear from her again. 

While it did comfort Elsa that her soulmate was far, far away, and out of her harm’s way, she had been conditioned to isolate herself and so she resumed not replying. Only her soulmate didn’t seem to get the hint. 

Every morning, Elsa awoke to a new image. Sometimes it was an animal like a reindeer, it’s antlers made with shaky lines. Sometimes it was a crude tree or a sloppy smiley face. A smile threatened to overtake Elsa’s own lips at the fact that her soulmate hadn’t improved their artistic skills in the past decade. And sometimes it was just a simple diamond shape with two circles. One thing was clear; Her soulmate was doing their best to talk to her, however far away they were. 

Elsa was 21 years old when she became the Queen of Arendelle. Her coronation day ended up being both her living nightmare and her salvation. It started when Anna walked up to her, arm in arm with a handsome prince from the Southern Isles named Hans. Anna explained that he didn’t have a soulmate either, or rather he tried to communicate with ink markings but no one ever replied. The pair believed that because they were both ‘unmatched’ so to speak, it must mean in some twisted way that they were meant to be together. 

Looking back on it now, Elsa could only assume that Hans didn’t have a soulmate because he was too heartless and callous to be deserving of one. Fate turned out not be as cruel as it first seemed, with Anna learning that she _did_ have a soulmate; He was just a more reclusive, anti-social kind of man who claimed that reindeer were better than people. His fear of people had turned him away from the entire concept of ‘soulmates’ to the chagrin of his family, the love experts. 

Elsa, on the other hand, still hadn’t met her soulmate, but at least she was sure that she was looking for a woman named Honey. Same-sex relationships were normal and accepted in Arendelle, thanks to her parents’ legislation. Elsa thought back to the look that had crossed her mother’s face when she had first read Elsa’s soulmate's name out loud and wondered if that moment had anything to do with her parents’ decision to legalize and normalize homosexuality in Arendelle. The idea made Elsa feel loved inside and she looked up at the portrait of her parents in the library fondly. Contemplatively, her brow wrinkled when she asked herself if she was ready to go out and search for her soulmate. She rotated her arm and traced the peony on her forearm with her finger, extremely glad that she had decided to forgo the gloves after everything that happened. 

She tirelessly looked in the library for answers about the mysterious forest like where it was and how one could get there. To no avail. She asked her advisors and the historians of Arendelle. Some had never heard of it while others insisted it was too dangerous to seek out.

If Elsa wanted to find a way to get there, she was going to need help.

.

.

.

Elsa was 24 years old when the voice started calling to her. It was the help she had been longing for since hitting dead end after dead end in search of the Forest. With the voice guiding her, she finally walked into the Enchanted Forest for the first time. 

“This forest is _beautiful_ ,” she breathed the words out in awe. Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven had followed her all the way here when she decided that she needed to search for the voice that was calling to her. There was no doubt in her mind when she awoke the spirits of the Enchanted Forest that Arendelle, the Forest, the voice, and her soulmate were all intricately linked. 

She stood with her sister in front of a statue of two children, a boy and a girl, as Anna took a sharp intake of breath. 

“Look. It’s _mother._ Mother saved father that day.” 

“Our mother was Northuldra.” 

A puzzle piece to the mystery clicked into place. Not just the mystery that brought them to the Forest initially, but a mystery that started the day that diamond glyphs first appeared on her skin. Elsa never questioned _how_ her mother could read the cryptic symbols. She never considered that her mother came from the Forest herself. 

The Northuldra and the soldiers of Arendelle had circled them and they sang out the last notes of an esoteric song. It felt like being enveloped in a warm hug as the singing voices surrounded them from all sides and chanted the melody in unison. It felt like being welcomed.

When the group split up, Elsa stayed by Yelana’s side to walk to the village together. But she had to abruptly stop herself from turning around sharply at something her ears picked up behind her. 

“I’m Honeymaren,” said a woman to Anna.

Elsa’s heart started to race. _Could it be_ , she asked herself. Hesitantly, but without being able to resist the temptation, she looked over her shoulder. 

Elsa’s eyes went wide and the hair on the back of her neck stood up as she looked the woman up and down. Quickly, before she was caught, she turned back around. Sweat started to pool under her armpits and her heart was still beating hard. 

_She was gorgeous!_

Elsa was completely oblivious to Yelana side-eying her, the woman’s gaze darting back and forth between her and Honeymaren. She just knowingly rolled her eyes and continued to lead Elsa and her family to their camp. 

.

.

.

Elsa was 24 years old when she started living with the Northuldra in the Enchanted Forest and she was convinced that her soulmate was there too. She was even convinced that she knew who it was, she just hadn’t developed the courage to properly ask her yet.

She cursed herself for never having tried to give ‘Honey’ her name because Honeymaren seemed completely oblivious to how Elsa observed her every day for any sign that they shared markings. Often, the woman had her brown leather coat on which hid any indication of markings underneath the long sleeves. 

Frustrated, Elsa drew a big, fat star on the back of her hand. She searched for the woman among the villagers around her and spotted her only to see her wearing a pair of wool gloves. Honeymaren bid goodbye to the group that she was chatting with and ran off into the forest with a basket under her arm. 

Dejected, Elsa sank down onto a log by a fire and put her chin in her hands. 

Ryder came over to join her, sitting next to her.

“Hey! Nice star drawing,” he smiled. Jokingly, he tugged off his mitten and inspected his hand. “Guess we’re not destined for each other,” he chuckled. 

Finding the back of Ryder’s hand blank didn’t surprise her but she let out a relieved sigh anyway. Not that she didn’t like Ryder. She just… _liked_ his sister a bit more. She liked Ryder in the way that she liked a cup of hot chocolate. There was fondness and warmth. It was a ‘pick me up’ after a long day. But the way she liked Honeymaren… 

Elsa wanted the woman to _get. in. her. pants_.

“Ryder, could you help me write a message?”

With a writing tool and some ink, Ryder took her forearm with care and wrote out the proper symbols.

“ _Where are you?”_

They waited and waited for a reply. 

“Are you sure this person lives in the Forest?” He said through the corner of his mouth, uncertain.

“I’m sure, she replied. “Just give it a second.” She looked up, eyes futilely scanning the area for the familiar woman who had not returned.

Then, Ryder brought her attention back to her arm.

“They’re writing! They said they’re at the river.” Ryder looked at Elsa enthusiastically. The writing was faint but it was clear enough.

“Thanks for your help! I need to go!” she said as she leapt up, running in the direction of the river.

Elsa jumped over the rocks on her path and dashed her way through the trees, hitching her dress up in her hands as she ran.

An uncomfortable thought crossed her mind. What if she came upon a different person at the river than who she was expecting? She had only been with the Northuldra for a few days- What if Honey was an exceedingly common name? Her heart began to hurt like it had turned to stone.

She approached the treeline between the forest and the river. She put her hands to the bark of one of the trees and rested her forehead against it, catching her breath. She told herself not to be disappointed no matter who she discovered at the water. Her soulmate had been her friend since she was six years old. She could do this, she _had_ to give them a chance, regardless of it was Honeymaren or not.

Taking one final breath for courage, Elsa walked out of the grove into the openness of the riverbank. The air caught in her lungs when she took in the sight of the young woman sitting on the earth of the riverside.

Honeymaren was in a thin, light shirt, and her chest bindings were visible through the material. Her trousers were rolled up, her bare feet submerged in the water. She was holding a thin brush in her hand that she dipped into the water before dabbing it into a mound of crushed, grainy charcoal at her side, next to a basket full of laundry.

As Honeymaren started to write on her arm, Elsa checked her own and nearly gasped in happiness at the faint lines that were appearing. The delicate medium that Honeymaren was using explained the faintness. She had decided to write more in Northuldran, obviously anxious to know if her soulmate was starting to understand more glyphs and signs.

Elsa didn’t want to keep Honeymaren waiting a second longer. She strided to the woman eagerly. Honeymaren looked up when she sensed Elsa’s presence.

“Elsa! How are you?” she asked pleasantly, gesturing to Elsa to sit.

“I’m fine, thank you for asking. And for letting me join you.”

Honeymaren shrugged. “No thanks needed.”

Elsa motioned to Honeymaren’s arm, careful not to reveal too much of her own. “You’re writing to your soulmate.”

“Yes!” Honeymaren glanced down at the gritty, charcoal markings. “My partner isn’t from here so we’ve barely exchanged actual words over the years. But I feel like they might be learning the symbols because they just asked me a question in perfect Northuldran writing.”

“Do you know what their name is?” asked Elsa despite knowing the answer.

Honeymaren’s face fell. “No. I barely know anything about them. I’ve always had a hunch that it’s a woman but other than that...” She absentmindedly shook her head. “There was a long time when I didn’t hear from my soulmate at all. It’s like she disappeared off the face of the Earth with no warning.”

Elsa guiltily looked away.

“But then one day she came back. As suddenly as she disappeared, she reappeared. At first, she barely wrote back but recently the communication has been frequent. I... I have to admit that I missed her a lot while she was gone.” Honeymaren swallowed. “I couldn’t help but worry about her. Like where she was or if she was hurt. Whatever was happening, it must have been impossible to explain through simple drawings.” She sighed and stared off into the distance. “That is, granted she wanted to talk to me but just wasn’t able to. Sometimes I wonder if I mean as much to her as she means to me.”

Honeymaren chanced a glance at Elsa who was staring at her with her mouth slightly agape. Honeymaren took it for puzzlement instead of amazement and quickly remarked, “I know it sounds crazy to care so much about someone I’ve never even met. And maybe the way I feel is just in my head. But now that the mist is gone, I feel like I’m closer than ever to finding her.”

When Elsa didn’t respond and just kept staring, Honeymaren shifted awkwardly and rubbed the back of her neck.

“Well, what about you? Who’s your soulmate?”

Elsa ran her hand through her hair, trying to suppress her smile. “I’m in a similar situation actually.”

“Really?”

“My soulmate is from this forest.” 

Surprise painted across Honeymaren’s face. 

“We’ve always sent each other drawings because we couldn’t exchange words. While we never _talked_ , my soulmate and I found our own way to have conversations. The drawings were our way to create stories or to convey emotions. If I was sitting by the window at night and they drew me a moon, then I knew we were both staring up at it, just in different places. And I tried to tell them that by adding my own illustrations of stars around their moon or something of that nature.”

Elsa checked Honeymaren’s expression and saw that the woman was looking her up and down like she was seeing her for the first time.

Elsa continued, “In fact, I do know one word in my soulmate’s language. It’s very simple- my mother showed it to me.” Elsa took the brush from Honeymaren’s grasp that had already gone slack and dipped it into the charcoal. Then she tenderly took Honeymaren’s hand and drew a diamond with two circles enclosed inside of it on her skin. Elsa’s heart thudded in her chest when a mirror image of the insignia appeared on her own hand that was delicately holding Honeymaren’s, on view for both of them to see.

Honeymaren turned her head, her gaze flashing from their connected hands to Elsa’s sapphire eyes. Elsa smiled at her somewhat sheepishly, eyes scanning the other woman’s face, trying to gauge her reaction.

“It’s you. All these years...” murmured Honeymaren, rendered almost speechless in astonishment.

Elsa nodded. Their hands were still connected and Elsa worried that maybe her skin was too cold or maybe she was invading Honeymaren’s personal space. She awkwardly let go of her soulmate’s hand, planting her own hands in her lap. It felt like simultaneously they knew each other while not knowing each other at all.

To Elsa’s surprise, Honeymaren retook her hand in hers.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” said Honeymaren to her with something genuine, intense, and mesmerizing in her eyes.

She continued, summoning a big breath to pronounce, “I’m so glad it’s you.”

Elsa was frozen for a moment before her sheepish smile widened into a joyful one.

Elsa and Honeymaren stayed seated side by side at the riverbed. They traded stories about their childhoods. Honeymaren playfully, yet also somewhat seriously, demanded that Elsa explain herself for lurking passively for years instead of replying to her messages. Elsa timidly tried to explain as much as could open up about, all the while Honeymaren kept a tight, comforting hold on her hand.

They sat there at the river the whole day, getting to know each other. They were making up for so much lost time.

When Elsa and Honeymaren reluctantly parted ways that night, Elsa laid down on her bed with butterflies in her stomach. A feeling in her chest had stirred that grew and grew with each passing moment that she spent with her soulmate. She knew she was a 24 year old woman, but she felt like she had been thrown back into her childhood. Like when she had been 6 years old and her hand had hovered over her arm, just above the sleeve. 

Now, Elsa pushed it back and from the pocket of her dress she withdrew a pen. Elsa began writing a message in her language, not finding it problematic if Honeymaren could understand it, knowing that they were finally together and Elsa could easily repeat the words to her in person.

Her elegant handwriting scrawled across her arm and she knew that at the same moment the script was dancing across the same spot on Honeymaren’s skin.

_“I’m glad it’s you too.”_

.

.

.

Epilogue

Elsa and Honeymaren gradually made progress towards learning how to communicate with each other through writing. They sat down together, a few days a week, mostly after dinner or during breakfast with some parchment and pens. Knowing that the Northuldra glyphs and their meanings were an odd concept to Elsa, Honeymaren patiently explained the system behind the symbols and watched Elsa as she practiced scrawling them on the paper. In return, Elsa helped Honeymaren memorize all 26 letters of the alphabet, plus their sounds, and brought some books from Arendelle to help her get accustomed to reading the unfamiliar words. 

“All of the ducks in the pond stared at the ugly duckling and began to... lag. To laug?” Honeymaren furrowed her brow at the book in her hands while sat at a table. 

“To laugh”, corrected Elsa. 

“That’s how you people spell _laugh_??” Honeymaren looked at her incredulously. “You said that the f sound comes from the letter F _.”_

“Sometimes the g and the h make that sound too when they’re together.” 

“Okay... The mother duckling took the ugly duckling and left feeling sli... sligty... slitly? _Sliffly_!?” She turned helplessly to Elsa again. 

“ _Slightly_. The mother duck felt slightly embarrassed.”

Honeymaren gawked at her and pointed at the book. “But you just said-“

“I know. In this case the g and h are silent. They just change the sound of the i so it’s not ‘slitly’ but ‘slightly’.” She gave Honeymaren a sympathetic smile. 

Honeymaren crossed her arms on the table and frustratingly rested her head on them. “This language is so dumb.”

Elsa suppressed a giggle. “And how do you spell ‘dumb’?”

Honeymaren stayed silent for a moment, clearly regretting having voiced her opinion. 

“D... u... m...? Don’t tell me there’s a g or an h,” she complained.

Elsa comfortingly rubbed her back. “Actually, sweetie, it’s d, u, m, b.” 

Honeymaren’s head shot up and she groaned, “B?? _B???_ What- Why- How?” 

“I know it’s weird. You’ll get used to it.” Elsa patted her shoulder and gave her a quick kiss. 

Honeymaren pouted. “Give me one more. This is hard.” 

Elsa obliged and pulled Honeymaren forward by the collar of her jacket to plant another kiss on her lips. 

She turned back to the book. “Now, you won’t get any more kisses until you finish the chapter.” 

Grumbling again, Honeymaren concentrated on the words on the page, vexed that her soulmate was rationing her affection as a motivational tactic. It was slightly evil, but it worked. “The mother duckling took the ugly duckling and left, feeling slightly embarrassed at the group’s laughter...” 

Since Honeymaren could already speak English, it was slightly easier to teach her to read and write than it was to memorize the hundreds of glyphs that there were for individual words and phrases. Honeymaren just had to learn to match the words she already knew with their written form.

Sometimes Honeymaren got her a’s and e’s mixed up. Or she wrote a word not knowing she was missing a silent letter. It made for a bit of a puzzle for Elsa on some days as she deciphered her soulmate’s version of written English. 

“ _Don’t come bac from Arendel too late. I still want to make diner for you_.” 

Elsa smiled down at the message. She carefully replied by drawing a diamond that was shaded in completely which meant ‘ _thank you._ ’”

“ _I’m leaving now. What are you cooking?_ ” 

“ _Stoo_.”

Elsa giggled. “ _What_?”

“ _Soop!_ ”

Elsa thought her soulmate was adorable. 

“ _The words are spelled stew and soup, dear._ ”

“ _CLOSE ENUFF,”_ was the hastily scribbled reply. Elsa laughed out loud getting the attention from nearby guards and servants. She gave them a shy look and then made her way out of the castle to the harbor to summon Nokk. These days, her arm was covered on every inch of skin with similar conversations and remarks. Elsa really didn’t care if Honeymaren was a perfect speller or got letters confused. Because, no matter where she went, she wasn’t alone. She wasn’t isolated. 

She had her soulmate and they understood each other just fine like her mother had promised. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was a bit tricky making this concept work with the original films but I feel like I did alright. 
> 
> I had to write big chunks of this, edit, and post on my phone. Formatting this on mobile was a f@$&ing nightmare XD so I’m sorry if something slipped through my otherwise usually diligent proofreading.


	5. still into you (childhood friends to lovers AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have returneddd. Finally XD Now I can finally say, thank you for all the nice comments and kind words on the last chapter! It means a lot that people liked it :)
> 
> Anyway- this is a totally self-indulgent, slice of life, modern childhood friends to lovers story because that’s my favorite trope and I just felt like writing it. Actually, a version of this was finished in January but I didn’t publish it cuz it was very very angsty. Which is not the way I wanna go with these one-shots. 
> 
> I hope everyone is staying healthy and safe!!
> 
> Enjoy.

Elsa, only 6 years old, was sitting rigidly in the backseat of the car and wringing her hands nervously. She had barely uttered a word during the car ride and her anxiety increased as they neared their destination. Elsa had never dreaded going to the playground quite so much as then. 

“We’re here. Are you excited?” Iduna asked as she parked the car and turned in her seat. 

Elsa looked away, directing her gaze out the window at the playground.

“Do I have to do this?” she asked quietly, a pit like a rock was tight in her stomach. 

Iduna reached for one of Elsa’s clammy hands and gave it a reassuring squeeze. 

“Elsa… What’s wrong?” The comforting sound of her mother’s voice, it’s gentle timbre and soothing tone melted away the walls around Elsa’s heart, even if the pit in her stomach remained there. 

Elsa forced out the words, “What if… she doesn’t like me?” 

“Oh, sweetheart. Why wouldn’tshe like you?” 

Elsa understood why Iduna had arranged the playdate. She was 6 years old and her only real friend was her 3-year-old sister, Anna. All of the other children that were Elsa’s age had friends in kindergarten. Every piece of encouragement that her parents gave to help her make friends seemed to be brushed away by Elsa in favor of reading a book. It didn’t matter if it was at school, in the neighborhood, or at the country club, Elsa’s favorite company was mainly herself. Her parents didn’t think it was good for her to be alone so much. 

Iduna led Elsa by the hand to the playground and she submitted to her fate, albeit finding comfort in the fact that her mother genuinely wouldn’t make her do anything that would hurt her. 

But, as Iduna and Elsa approached a woman carrying a small toddler with an unruly mop of hair on his head, Elsa’s apprehension was replaced with confusion. The two women hugged, greeting each other and said the things that all adults say like, “It’s been so long,” and “Oh my, Elsa, you’ve grown so much! You were _this_ tall the last time I saw you.” 

Elsa regarded the boy curiously as she tugged on her mother’s hand and whispered, “You said it would be a girl.”

Iduna gave a small laugh before saying, “This is Ryder. Honeymaren is playing over there.” She pointed at a girl that looked closer to Elsa’s age who was rambunctiously dangling from the monkey bars. When she noticed them looking at her, she smiled and waved.

Iduna crouched down to Elsa’s height and said the dreaded words, “Why don’t you go and say hi?"

Knowing she had no choice, Elsa sighed.

“…Okay.”

With one last look at her mother, she steeled herself, making her way across the playground, the rock in her stomach still causing uncomfortable pressure. When she approached the monkey bars, the other girl was hanging upside down by her knees. It didn’t look very safe and Elsa was about to say something about being careful when the girl unhooked her legs and somersaulted from the bars. She landed on her feet right in front of Elsa which made the blonde girl jump back, in awe.

“I’ve never seen anyone do that before,” said Elsa before she could second guess herself. 

The girl smiled and her eyes grew wide at Elsa standing before her. “Wow- your hair is so pretty!” 

Elsa blushed, reaching up and reflexively taking her braid into her hands, stroking the soft, interwoven locks. “O-oh, thanks. I like yours too.”

Elsa looked at the girl properly, taking in her features and appearance. The girl’s baggy jacket and jeans stood in stark contrast to Elsa’s dainty dress and her Mary Jane shoes. Elsa could see the other girl’s knee was scabbed through a hole in her pants and her brown hair was longer than Elsa’s, parted into twin braids. 

“I’m Honeymaren,” she said with a friendly smile. 

“Elsa,” she replied pointing to herself. “It’s… nice to meet you.” And Elsa couldn’t help but really mean it when she said it. 

“So, what do you wanna do?” Honeymaren asked her, looking around at the playground. 

“Um… we could play in the sand pit?”

“The sand pit? We can’t do that. You’ll get your nice dress all dirty!”

Elsa looked down at her attire. The rock in her stomach shrunk smaller and smaller. “That’s okay. It’s just sand.” 

They scampered to the sand pit but Honeymaren wouldn’t let them start playing until she had taken off her jacket and placed it carefully in the pit. 

“There, now you can sit on it and keep your dress clean,” she explained as she plopped down, grabbing a shovel to start digging. 

Elsa shyly sat down on Honeymaren’s jacket. Her face was overtaken with a smile. She didn’t quite understand Honeymaren’s logic because now her own clothes would surely be covered in sand. But if Honeymaren was willing to give up something of hers for Elsa, it had to mean that she liked her. 

From that day on, they were thick as thieves. The next time they met up, Elsa took the seat next to Honeymaren with ease and immediately jumped into conversation, as if they hadn’t been apart at all.

“You were right. The sand got _everywhere._ ”

They started hanging out together at school. On weekends they had sleepovers and they practiced Northuldran script writing with their mothers. As Iduna watched Elsa and Honeymaren write with crayons at the kitchen table, copying and showing each other glyphs that they had learned, Iduna sank into her seat, content as a mother could be. 

One day, when they were 10 years old, Elsa and Honeymaren climbed on the wooden fence around the reindeer pen at Honeymaren’s parents’ farm. They sat on it to toss hay, moss, and lichen from a bucket into the pen for their furry friends to eat. 

Elsa started, “Anna told me a secret. I’ll tell you what it is, but you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

Honeymaren’s eyes lit up at the offer of a mysterious secret. “I promise! What did she say??”

Elsa looked around cautiously and scooted closer to her friend. She whispered, “Anna told me that she _kissed a boy_ at school.” 

Honeymaren gasped. “Really??”

Elsa nodded. “She said it was her classmate, Kristoff. She’s liked him since _forever._ ” 

Honeymaren made a doubtful face. “She could just be making it up.”

“She wouldn’t make it up! At least… I don’t think she would.”

“Have you ever done it?”

Elsa looked at her blankly. “Done what?”

“ _Kissed_ someone.” 

“You would know if I had,” Elsa retorted, playfully nudging Honeymaren’s shoulder. 

“True, but have you never wanted to?” 

Elsa furrowed her brow when she responded impassively, “Not really. I don’t think so.” 

“I haven’t either,” stated Honeymaren as she chucked the remains in the bucket out onto the field in the pen. “I don’t understand what the big deal is. Boys are gross. I would know, I have to live with one.” 

Laughter and giggles peeled out from the two on their perch, their hands overlapping on the wooden fence, connected in solidarity. Both of their hearts were at peace, appreciative of a mutual feeling. It was the feeling of being safe and comfortable. It was the feeling of not being alone.

.

.

.

When Honeymaren was 12 years old, she realized she was very much into girls, and not boys. The process that had led to this awareness started when her mother had given her…

 _The talk_.

Honeymaren had been sat on their brown leather sofa in the living room, a woven blanket wrapped around her shoulders. In front of her on the coffee table were three items that were ordinary under normal circumstances but a shudder ran down her spine at knowing they had to do with the conversation at hand, that being, 'the s- word.'

Sex.

The three items were a banana, a peeled orange, and a book with diagrams of the male and female anatomy.

Honeymaren winced in various ways as she listened to her mother explain in delicate, yet explicit detail what sex was and the all the ways one could have it.

 _“Don’t let anyone try to tell you that sex is only something that men can enjoy,”_ her mother said standing at the table, as she waved the banana around.

The girl groaned into her hands. She had always been sure that her parents were somewhat hippies but even this was a little more bohemian than what she had expected.

Her mother continued, “Sex is _good_. And sex is supposed to be fun. There is nothing to be ashamed of about it. It’s about you and your partner, your shared safety, and your happiness at the end of the day.”

Honeymaren sighed as she looked up, hands over her mouth contemplatively.

“So, sex is about happiness?” she asked tentatively. The s-word was like an awkward frog in her throat.

Her mother smiled at the innocence of the question. “It can be.” She sat down next to Honeymaren and pushed the girl’s hair back with her fingers. “Obviously, a lot of people have sex to have children but there many pairs who don’t. Like couples who are two men or two women, who don’t have that opportunity. But they still do it because they want to be intimate and loving to each other. So, yeah, in many ways it is about happiness.”

Honeymaren pondered over those words, biting her lip. “I… I don’t know… if boys make me… happy,” she breathed out the last word like a confession.

Her mother just continued running her hands through Honeymaren’s hair.

“That’s entirely okay, sweetie.” 

Honeymaren’s shoulders relaxed from the tension she had been unknowingly storing in her body. She leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder and closed her eyes. The words her mother had just spoken, more so than the motions of her hand, lulled her mind to a state of serenity.

.

.

.

“Hey, do you want to come over to my house for a sleepover tomorrow?”

Elsa, now 13, looked up from her book at Honeymaren as the girl sat down on the bench next to her with her lunch box. 

“Yes, but on one condition,” Elsa said seriously, holding up her finger. “We have to study for the math test on Monday.” 

Honeymaren groaned as she lowered her ham and cheese sandwich from her lips. “Do we _have_ to?”

“It’s for our own good. Besides, you know that’s exactly what our parents will say, anyway.” 

Honeymaren sighed. “Okay, fine. But I get to make a condition too!” Elsa looked at her expectantly. “We have to watch a horror movie.” 

“ _Nooo_ ,” Elsa complained and slammed her book closed. “You know I hate horror movies.”

“Please?! You know my parents won’t care-“

“But I care! Scary movies make me have bad dreams.”

“Oh-“ Honeymaren’s insistence burned out as she shifted closer so that their shoulders were touching. “Well, there’s something else that we could do. I need your help, actually.” At that, Elsa looked at her with curiosity. 

A day later, they were both in Honeymaren’s bathroom at her house and Elsa was looking distressed at a pair of scissors in her hands. 

“This is such a bad idea.”

“It’s not,” responded Honeymaren with a chuckle as she dried her freshly showered hair with a towel so that it was damp rather than sopping wet. 

“People always regret cutting their own bangs,” argued Elsa. 

“That’s why I’m not cutting them. You are,” countered Honeymaren with a devilish smirk. 

“This is a mistake-“

“I trust you to do it.”

“You shouldn’t!”

“But I do!”

Elsa sat down at the edge of the bathtub with the scissors still in her grasp. Honeymaren hung the towel and perched herself next to her. 

“It’s easy,” she encouraged her friend. “You just have to cut the hair in small pieces, bit by bit, going higher and higher. You can take your time.”

Elsa sighed. “Okay, but this was your idea. How far do you want to go?” 

“Here, I’ll show you.” Honeymaren pulled out a folded piece of paper from her back pocket that Elsa realized was a page from a punk rock magazine and spread it out for her to see. Honeymaren pointed her finger to a picture of a singer with short bangs. 

Elsa balked at the image. “You want it _that_ short?” 

“Yeah, don’t you think it looks good?” Honeymaren held the page out in her hands and peered at the female singer. “I think she looks really, really cool.” Honeymaren’s smirk reemerged and she got a gleam in her eye that Elsa couldn’t quite place. 

Suddenly, Elsa got a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach while looking at the admiration on Honeymaren’s face. It made Elsa feel fuzzy and she was taken slightly aback at this sudden surge of affection that she was experiencing. She tried not to let its strength scare her because at the core of it was that usual feeling of warmth that she always felt around her friend.

“It’s just hair. It will grow back again.” Honeymaren gave her a reassuring smile that Elsa tried to return. 

Gently, Elsa took two bobby pins and separated the main parts of Honeymaren’s hair from the locks that fell directly over her forehead. Honeymaren already had long bangs that framed her face. Elsa then grabbed the scissors and was cautiously approaching Honeymaren’s hair with them when the girl suddenly halted her movement, by placing her hand on Elsa’s. 

As one last pep talk, she said, “Just do it slowly. You can’t mess it up.” 

“Okay…”

Elsa took a deep breath as Honeymaren released her hand. “Go ahead, snowflake.” 

The occurrence of Honeymaren’s favorite nickname for her calmed Elsa’s nerves slightly. Honeymaren had created the nickname after they first met, joking that Elsa looked like a character from _The Snow Queen_ with her porcelain skin and platinum hair. It was a comforting reminder that Honeymaren wouldn’t ever say anything mean to Elsa, even if the bangs ended up looking awful. In fact, no matter how bad the final result looked, Elsa had a feeling that Honeymaren would tell her that she liked it. Because she was the kind of person that cared less about herself and more about the people around her. 

Elsa started cutting, frowning at the fact that the scissors were a simple, dull pair of Crayolascissors made with cheap purple plastic. But she had already started so now she needed to commit. 

She chopped off most of the bangs in quick snips until she got to Honeymaren’s nose. Then she did what Honeymaren had said and went slower and slower the closer she got to Honeymaren’s eyebrows. She checked back and forth between the bangs that she was cutting and the reference image. Finally, it seemed like she had cut enough to match the picture when she got right above Honeymaren’s smooth and full eyebrows. Elsa clipped a few more strands here and there, fine-tuning the shape of the fringe before Honeymaren jumped up and looked in the mirror. Her hands held the edge of the sink as she leaned forward towards her reflection. 

“ _Elsa-“_

Elsa held her breath as she waited for the verdict. 

“I love it!” Honeymaren turned to her and yanked her up from the bathtub into a hug. “You did an amazing job.” 

Relieved and overjoyed, Elsa giggled into Honeymaren’s shoulder as her arms naturally wrapped around her. When she pulled away, she kept her arms on Honeymaren, inspecting her at an arm’s length. 

“It suits you,” Elsa agreed. 

Honeymaren released her hold and looked at herself in the mirror again. Her beaming smile lit up the whole room and knowing that she had helped to put it there gave Elsa the best feeling she maybe had ever felt in her life. 

.

.

.

Honeymaren was 14 years old and suffering through her last year of middle school. She was seated already in her usual spot for history class when Elsa briskly walked into the room, her books held tightly to her chest. She sat down next to Honeymaren hastily, even a bit curtly, and Honeymaren quirked an eyebrow at her weird entrance. As Mr. Weselton started the lesson, Elsa’s nervous energy didn’t dissipate. Honeymaren ripped a piece of paper from her notebook and jotted down a question in Northuldran glyphs. 

“ _What’s up with you?”_ She discreetly slid the note over to her friend. 

Elsa spotted the note as it entered her field of vision. She skimmed the note quickly and scribbled her reply, passing it back. 

_“PHILIP JUST KISSED ME!!!”_

Surprise overtook Honeymaren’s expression at the message in Northuldran script that was underlined and punctuated with three exclamation points. 

Honeymaren didn’t hesitate to write back, “ _What- When- Where- OMG?!”_

Then, Elsa’s hand moved fervently across the page as she replied, “ _I don’t know?! It just happened. He came out of the locker room for swim practice in his trunks and a towel and I think he thought I was checking him out? I think he’s liked me since Anna’s birthday party.”_

Honeymaren’s brow wrinkled at that. “ _What happened at Anna’s birthday party??”_

Elsa paused before replying again, realizing that Honeymaren didn’t know because she had been at the Summer Solstice Festival with the Northuldra instead of at Anna’s party at their pool. While she loved her sister, Elsa had wished to be at the festival too and Honeymaren’s absence had gotten her down at the time.

Elsa flipped the paper over to have more space. “ _Well… all the girls were in bikinis, so the guys were being kind of obnoxious.”_ Honeymaren rolled her eyes. “ _Philip told them all to shut up and I thanked him later for showing respect. Since then, Snow and Belle have been teasing us about being a couple and I’ve been brushing it off. But, I suppose, he hasn’t??”_

Honeymaren finished reading the longer message and her hand wavered for a second about what she was going to ask and if she was really prepared for the answer. But she figured the topic was at hand and they weren’t getting any younger, so she took a deep breath and wrote, “ _Do you like him back?”_

Elsa’s eyes had just finished skimming the symbols when the paper was abruptly snatched away from them. Mr. Weselton started scolding them and Honeymaren nervously rubbed the back of her neck, realizing that they had forgotten to be subtle with their note passing. But as Mr. Weselton’s eyes darted around the paper in confusion, an almost mirthful smile threatened to cross both of their faces.

“What are these shapes? Is this some kind of game?!?” He interrogated the two girls. 

Honeymaren sucked her bottom lip in to suppress her chuckle. “No, sir.” 

“What is this?!” Mr. Weselton got red in the face, waving the piece of paper in question around.

“It’s my notes, sir. About your lesson,” replied Honeymaren with a poker face. 

“These are drawings! Scribblings of diamonds! It’s nonsense!” 

Honeymaren crossed her arms and an assertive air overtook her. “This ‘nonsense’ is the language of the Northuldra, the indigenous tribe of this land. You shouldn’t be disrespecting it. And you should know what our script looks like, seeing that you’re the _history_ teacher, sir.” 

All of the steam of Mr. Weselton’s temper evaporated in a second and the redness of his face quickly became an embarrassed blush as he realized that Honeymaren had made an irrefutable point. 

When he had returned the paper to Honeymaren’s possession and resumed the class, Honeymaren felt a tug to her shirt as Elsa leaned to her side and whispered in her ear, “That was really badass of you. And no, I don’t like Philip.” 

Shivers ran up and down Honeymaren’s spine when she felt Elsa’s breath on her skin and the tingly feeling in her stomach remained long after Elsa had readjusted in her seat to actually pay attention to the lesson. 

.

.

.

When Elsa was 16 years old and in her second year of high school, she had already long realized that Honeymaren- who just went by ‘Maren’ now- was the only person that knew everything about her and made her feel completely comfortable with herself. But she hadn’t yet realized exactly _why_ Maren was that person.

Elsa 7:19pm  
Aurora is having an ‘end of school year’  
party tonight. Her three crazy aunts  
are out of town  
Will you be there?

Maren 7:24pm  
Uhhh considering i only just found out  
about it, i still need to decide

Elsa 7:25pm  
Please come, it will be fun XD

Maren 7:26pm  
Fun? Elsa, I’ve known you for ten years,  
you’re not the biggest fan of small talk and dancing

Elsa 7:26pm  
That’s why i don’t dance,  
i just drink. I’m bringing my own wine

Maren 7:30pm  
Of course you would XD  
idk I’ll let you know

Elsa 7:31pm  
‘kay  
It starts at 9

Elsa threw her phone on her bed, frustrated. It bounced off one of the decorative throw pillows and landed on the rug on the floor with a thud. _Great._ She groaned, leaving it be, as she made her way to the bathroom to do her makeup and hair.

Three raps on the door frame brought her attention to Anna who was standing in a blue leather jacket and way, way, _way_ too much eyeliner.

“Hey sis.”

“Hey- _is that my jacket_??” Elsa gestured pointedly to it with her comb. “I’ve been looking for that for a week.”

Anna adjusted the collar and lapel with her hands. “I borrowed it because it looks snazzy.”

“You can’t just borrow things without asking.” Elsa leaned down to her sister, who was still shorter than her but growing more by the minute. _Puberty,_ thought Elsa knowingly. She wiped the excess makeup away with her thumbs as Anna writhed in her grasp.

“And where did you get this?” Elsa laughed. “Did you ransack the department store for all their mascara products?”

Anna finally successfully batted Elsa’s hands away. “It’s my makeup! And I only bought one pen. Mom took me yesterday,” she said bashfully.

“And you used all of it?” chuckled Elsa again.

Anna turned to the mirror, leaning on the counter. “Oh no, is it too heavy?”

Elsa hugged Anna around the shoulders, cherishing that she still could based on their heights and that would most likely soon change. “A little bit. So, what’s with the outfit, Yzma?”

“You said you were going to a party today and I thought… maybe… I could go with you.”

Elsa released Anna from her hug and leaned on the counter to look at her sister directly. She quirked an eyebrow. “Do you really want to be stuck in a room with a bunch of people you don’t know and a bunch of guys with really bad BO?”

“ _Yes,”_ Anna implored. “I want to be cool like you and your friends.”

“You’re _13,_ Anna. Why do you want to grow up so fast?”

“I don’t know.” Anna shrugged, looking back into the mirror at her reflection.

“Trust me, in three years there are going to be so many parties that your head will spin. Time will fly. Just be a little patient, okay?”

When Anna nodded, Elsa still had to assert just a little bit more of her older-sisterlyness and firmly ruffled Anna’s hair.

“Cut it out, Elsa,” complained Anna.

“Alright, alright.” Elsa nudged her sister out of the bathroom with her hands. Just when Anna was going to pass the threshold of the door and walk out of sight, Elsa snapped her fingers and pointed at the jacket.

“Wait, leave that here.”

.

.

.

It was 11:12pm and Elsa was draining the last bit of wine out of her cup in big gulps. When she had no more, she gazed with disappointment at the empty ‘voidness’ of her plastic cup. She discarded the cup entirely and reached for the bottle she had brought with her on the coffee table, drinking from it directly. She leaned back against the sofa in the nicely decorated living room of Aurora’s house, music blaring around her, people shoving past each other in the tight halls and doorways.

Compulsively, Elsa checked her phone again for the time and for any texts from Maren. There weren’t any.

“ _Elsaaaaa!_ ” A voice said as a body suddenly enveloped her in a hug, crashing onto the sofa as well. “You came. I’m so glad,” said Aurora happily.

Elsa blew some blonde hair out of her face, not sure if it was hers or the other girl’s. “This is the third time that you’ve greeted me since I got here.”

“Really?” Aurora chuckled. “Haha, my bad.” She drunkenly poked Elsa’s face. “I’ve just been trying to look busy y’know? This charisma coach I found online said that to make people like you have to seem like you’re someone with fun conversations who everyone wants to talk to.”

A bit of the pink lip gloss on Aurora’s lip was smudged and Elsa found herself staring at it as Aurora went on more and more about this amazing ‘coach’ she had been talking to.

Then, Elsa’s eyes got suddenly wider when she realized that the pink smudge was coming closer and closer as Aurora leaned into her personal space.

Only when she was a breath away did Aurora stop, and Elsa’s heart pounded at the sudden proximity.

“So, Elsie,” Aurora whispered. “Someone told me you have the 411 on Philip.”

Elsa’s alarm swiftly morphed into confusion and she furrowed her brow at the other girl. “Philip? You mean the guy on the swimming team?”

“ _Yeah_. I know you guys were a thing once. Did you ever kiss him?? How was it?” Aurora asked with a suggestive giggle.

Elsa internally rolled her eyes. She sat up and took a drink from her wine to get away from the girl’s scouring eyes.

“Those were just rumors.”

“Oh,” she said disappointed that she wasn’t getting ‘the 411’ as she called it. “So… you guys never…?”

Elsa shook her head.

At that Aurora sighed and folded her elbows over the back of the couch, resting her chin on them. She wore a pensive expression and her eyes flashed a shade darker.

“I’ve liked him since the 6th grade and he’s never even given me the time of day. It’s like I’ve been asleep to him for years. Like I don’t even exist.”

Elsa felt something bubble up inside of her as she felt the girl’s sadness. Maybe it was a resurgence of that sisterly side of her from earlier or maybe it was the alcohol in her blood, but a series of encouraging words streamed out of her.

“ _What_? Come on. How could he not notice you all these years?” She waved her bottle in his direction. “He probably thinks he doesn’t have a chance with you. You’re a catch!” Elsa pointed at Aurora. “If you walked up to him right now and asked him out, he wouldn’t think twice. You should go for it. We only live once! And if he says no, you’re better off without him anyway.”

“Oh my god, Elsa.” Aurora put a hand over her own heart. “You said exactly what my charisma coach would say. Maybe you’re right.” For one last smidgen of confidence, Aurora took the wine bottle and had a few sips. She placed it back in Elsa’s hand and smoothed over her shirt and skirt. She got up and maneuvered to the other side of the room, eyes trained on her prize.

Elsa watched her go, a small smile on her face at recognizing a feeling of affinity and rapport in her chest that had grown over the course of their conversation.

Just as Elsa was going to check her phone, a voice interrupted her.

“Elsa! Come play cards with us!”

.

.

.

Maren was asleep, somewhat uncomfortably sprawled over the loveseat in her bedroom since she was too big to lay across it. She was still fully clothed in her outfit from the day, one earphone was out and dangling over the edge of the small sofa while the other was still playing music in her ear.

The door to her bedroom abruptly opened and closed, startling her awake. She blinked at the intruder as she gingerly unfolded her limbs from their locked positions, groaning at the crick in her neck.

“Elsa? What are you doing here?” She checked her phone. It read _1:05 a.m._ and a slew of texts from people about the party, including ones from Elsa.

Elsa didn’t answer, instead, she simply tugged off her jacket and threw it on the bed before sitting down onto it as well. 

Maren stood up, stretching her legs and her back as she asked, “How was the party?” Her voice was deep and gruff from her nap.

This time Elsa answered with a curt, “It was okay, but I left early.”

“Oh. That sucks. You were sure it was going to be fun.”

Elsa looked up at her for the first time since entering and frowned. “I only said that so that you would go. And then you didn’t, and you didn’t even let me know-” She took the pillow on the bed and hurled it at Maren. 

“Hey _, ow-“_ Maren caught the pillow as it smacked her.

Elsa buried her face in the comforter on the bed, her voice muffled by the fabric. “I would have skipped the party if I had known you were ditching.”

At that Maren tossed the pillow onto Elsa and it bounced off her back.

“ _Uoof.”_

Maren replied, “Sorry, I fell asleep like three hours ago. Did you at least bring the wine with you?” 

“No. Drank it all. And a bunch of other stuff. I kept losing at cards.” Elsa tilted her head up from the bedspread, smirking slyly at Maren.

Maren chuckled. “Uh-huh. And I’m guessing that blush on your cheeks isn’t from any makeup.”

Elsa rubbed her face. “Nooo. Clearly.” Then she laughed, “That reminds me, though, I _have_ to tell you about this thing that Anna did earlier.” 

Maren flung herself onto the bed as well, making them bounce on the mattress lightly and listened to Elsa’s stories from the night with amusement.

“And then, Aurora got up and told me to wish her luck, and she walked straight to Philip and got down on _one knee-“_

“No way-”

“And she asked him to _marry_ her. I swear, it was amazing...”

.

.

.

As the night went on, they had moved under the covers. They were too caught in their bubble on the bed and too tied to each other to bother changing out of their clothes. They were side by side. Sleeping in the same bad was something they had done hundreds of times before. But when the cadence of their voices reduced to low whispers and Elsa's hand came up to wrap her fingers around Maren’s arm, something felt different.

Their eyes met. Into the space between them, Elsa whispered, “Can I just… try something?”

“What?” Maren asked with anticipation. She lifted her head off the pillow just enough to nudge it closer to Elsa, waiting.

The electrons in the atoms in the air kindled dangerously. They vibrated more and more fiercely, intensely, coinciding with the rhythm of the two girls’ heartbeats. 

That’s when Elsa closed the distance between them, and her lips gently met Maren’s.

The kiss was featherlight, barely there, but enough to be real. There was no way to take it back, so Elsa decided to commit fully and put her hand over Maren’s cheek, pulling her in deeper. Maren’s eyelids slid closed as she let herself crumble into the kiss. Maren’s lips felt pillow-y against Elsa’s and the way they closed around her bottom lip sent thrilling shudders through her ribcage. Elsa felt the barest brush of tongue skate under her top lip that made her take Maren’s mouth fully to discover more of the sweet taste and sensation that started where their lips met and ended where Elsa’s heart skipped in her chest.

The kiss only broke when Maren started to laugh. Immediately, Elsa joined in, covering her face with her hands sheepishly. The emotions rolling around in her stomach and chest were a mixture of happiness, awkwardness, embarrassment, and relief that wound together into a ball of tingles that shot bursts of each emotion through her body.

Sensing this, Maren took Elsa’s hand between them comfortingly.

“I don’t know how you meant that, but I liked it.”

“Mhm,” Elsa hummed. “I liked it too.

“All I can say is, I hope I was better than Philip.”

Elsa smiled, eyes lidded, looking down at their hands.

“You were much, much better.”

.

.

.

Epilogue

The following summer was bliss. For someone who was a busy worker bee like Elsa, who lived and breathed color-coded notes and bookmarked textbooks, the happenstance of a summer filled with lazy days and aimless car rides were usually out of the question.

Until what happened with Maren.

Their first summer as girlfriends included blue slushie stained lips, finding new patterns in the stars, and skinny dipping in the Arendelle harbor in the middle of the night.

Maren made it easy. Maren made being someone’s _girlfriend_ easy.

The first time they had ‘the s-word’, as Maren used to call it _,_ was both exciting and stiff, groping and fumbling, talkative and yet, breathless. When they had found somewhat of a rhythm that worked for them and Elsa’s name fell from Maren’s lips in a way she had never heard it before, Elsa nearly lost control then and there. Elsa rolled Maren onto her back and dappled her skin with reddish-purple, round hickeys. She didn’t care if it was a stereotypical teenager thing to do. She knew that she wanted it. The feeling of wanting Maren’s body under her own had grown and grown from the second that their lips had connected for the very first time.

Afterwards, they laid in Elsa’s bed wrapped around each other. The window was open, and a soft breeze tickled where their skin was exposed over the sheets of the bed. The slightest smell of chlorine remained on their skin from their swim in the pool. How it mixed with Maren’s scent could have made Elsa drunk and she wanted to bury her face in Maren’s shoulder to drink it in. 

“I love you. I don’t think I’ve said it enough,” Elsa murmured, her long eyelashes fluttered. 

Maren adjusted to sprinkle three kisses on Elsa’s collarbone, a part of her body that Elsa now knew made Maren crazy-eyed with desire. This was affirmed when Maren rounded her mouth and playfully nipped at the skin there. Their bare legs were tangled, and Elsa scratched a spot she had discovered that Maren _particularly_ liked at the back of her neck. Maren responded greedily, removing herself from Elsa’s chest to nuzzle their noses together. Elsa could sense how Maren was about to plant a kiss on her lips… 

Then _\- BAM-_ the door burst open. “Hey, can I borrow your- _oh my god!_ ” Anna covered her eyes with her hands. “WHY ARE YOU NAKED?”

“ANNA!” Elsa yelped loudly. Like lightning, she pushed Maren off of her and slid her body deeper under the covers.

Anna shrieked in a way that Elsa could only describe as a verbal keyboard smash because it was a mixture of multiple sounds with no clear meaning that elicited boisterous laughter from Maren and sheer mortification from Elsa. Elsa pulled the covers over her head, trying to save both her face and dignity.

Anna bounced on her toes in the doorway. She was peeking through her fingers and rapidly shouting incredulous questions and exclamations like, “ _Oh my god”_ and “ _Amazing_ \- _Are you really gay- This is so woke-“_

Elsa popped her head up from the covers only to holler, “ANNA! _LEAVE!_ ”

Anna squeaked a last time before pulling the door closed in one swift motion, just in time before a pillow smacked against it. They could still hear her shrieking as she ran down the hallway into other parts of the house.

Elsa and Maren looked at each other and when their eyes met, they started shaking with laughter. Maren hugged Elsa tightly to her body, stroking her platinum-colored hair, content despite the interruption.

“Well, we had been planning on telling her soon anyway,” chuckled Maren.

Elsa giggled. “At least she learned to ask about borrowing my things. Now she just has to learn to always knock.”

“I don’t think she’s going to forget any time soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do these two always end up in bed in my fics??? XD I’m not complaining. Sorry for any typos!! It’s been awhile. I’m a little rusty.  
> And here's the pic of the singer that could have been the one in the magazine. Yeah its Hayley Williams the love of my life don’t come for me  
> https://em.wattpad.com/ea7e151a051fbf6bbf6e8b3ef6df9c930de2657b/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f7a725f633758767379796c4944513d3d2d3536353233333030352e313532383132336365656462663037643936323530333136383134342e6a7067?s=fit&w=720&h=720


	6. I'm Spoken For... (Soulmate AU 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Soulmate AU where soulmates can feel each other’s physical and emotional pain to a degree.)
> 
> “Has anyone seen Elsa?” Honeymaren asked a group of Northuldra men towards the side of the village.  
> “I think I saw her go in the direction of the meadow,” called Ryder from where he was standing.  
> “Oh, thank the spirits,” sighed Honeymaren.  
> Ryder walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Is something wrong?”  
> “It’s probably nothing. Just Elsa being… Elsa,” Honeymaren said as she wiggled her fingers in a non-descript motion. “She’s been gone since lunch and she’s not responding to my soulmate signals to her. That and my hat has mysteriously vanished.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would call this a hurt/comfort fic. It's not too heavy imo. If you can handle the movies then you can probably handle this. There's a fluff-y surprise at the end.  
> (Sorry for any typos. I don't have a beta to read over my work. Hope you like it!)

At five years old, Elsa started to realize that she occasionally felt pain in her body that she knew came from an unexplained source. Usually, the pain was minor. A little pang on her elbow even when she sat comfortably on the couch, not having hit her elbow anywhere. Or a dull ache near her foot, reminiscent of a twisted ankle, despite being seated at her desk and practicing spelling.

However, a day came that brought pain so real it enveloped her enough to wake her from her midday nap and she began to cry. With her teddy bear in hand, and cheeks damp with some tears, she slid out of bed to get help.

.

“ _Your Majesty?!”_

“Yes?” Iduna looked up from the maps and records scattered around the desk in the library of the castle at Gerda’s distraught call.

The woman rounded the table and approached her with the sniffling blonde princess in her arms.

“Little Elsa is having a bit of a hard time,” replied Gerda gently.

“Oh, sweetie,” Iduna said, reaching out and taking Elsa into her own arms. Elsa desperately welcomed the embrace of her mother. “What’s the matter? Hm?” Iduna asked warmly in a way only a mother could.

Elsa rubbed at the remnants of tears on her face with her hands and mumbled, “I was asleep. And then I woke up because my arm hurt really badly.”

“Which one?”

“The left one.” Elsa held her arm out gingerly.

“Does it still hurt?” asked Iduna as she took the arm and placed a soft kiss on it.

“ _Yes._ ” Elsa sniffled again. “Why won’t it go away? I didn’t do anything to hurt it.”

“Sometimes we feel pain that isn’t ours,” explained Iduna delicately. “It’s Mother Nature’s way of reminding us that we’re always connected to the people around us, no matter what we’re going through.”

Elsa rested her head on her mother’s shoulder, not quite understanding. “But it hurts.”

Iduna sighed. It was always a challenge to explain the intricate, somewhat mature concept of soulmates to the little ones.

A memory appeared at the forefront of Iduna’s mind then, taking her thoughts to another time and place. She remembered it like it was yesterday, the sounds and smells of celebration embedded into her brain. At that time, she was a simple girl in her village. She weaved garments and scarves for her community. She was just starting to learn pottery-making when the strangers from the neighboring land visited the Forest. She didn’t know it then, but she would never make scarves or pottery for her people again after that.

Iduna saw the young prince get thrown off his feet and land with a _thump_ some yards away. When bumping his noggin against a rock coincided with a sharp pang that she felt at the back of her head, Iduna’s stomach flipped. Quickly, she ran over to him and assessed his injury. The gash would most likely need stitches. She called Gale over to help her transport the prince away from danger, all while her head throbbed and radiated with ongoing pain. Just like that, her primary mission became to bring the prince, her soulmate, to safety.

Iduna snapped back to the present moment, suddenly feeling sympathy for Elsa’s soulmate. Whatever happened to them was causing great discomfort.

“What does it feel like?” asked Iduna.

Elsa considered for a moment. “It just hurts. Maybe like… fire?”

“Like a burn?”

“No, worse. From here to here.” Elsa pointed with her finger from the crook of her elbow to the palm of her hand.

Iduna looked on empathetically. It sounded like a broken arm, Iduna thought to herself.

“Why don’t we read a story together on the sofa in front of the fireplace until you feel better? How does that sound?” Iduna lovingly pushed Elsa’s hair back from around her face.

When her daughter nodded, Iduna gripped her tighter and they walked off together, leaving her work behind in the library.

…

Honeymaren had started training to be a warrior at a young age. Some kids got lessons in a variety of activities from basket weaving, to fishing, to riding, or baking bread. The variety helped them to decide what tasks they wanted to take on for the village when they got older.

But Honeymaren always knew two things. She wanted to be strong and she wanted to be around the reindeer. After enough pestering, she convinced Yelana to let her specialize her activities early, only because she was so certain about what she wanted to be. At six years old, she was given her first staff to run through light sparring exercises.

Honeymaren had a high pain tolerance, she knew. When she broke her arm the previous year, being held back from playing was more of a nuisance than the pain itself had been. Now as she swung her staff around, stance uneven and movements unpracticed, she met her new task with a sense of fearlessness. She wasn’t a great warrior yet, but she wanted to be one day.

.

After a long day of climbing trees to siphon wax from the bark, followed by a grueling sparring round, Honeymaren was spent. She sat at the fire, cradling a bowl of stew in her hands, enjoying the warmth. Somehow, the pain was a reminder of how hard she worked every day, so she took slight pride in her sore muscles. She was eight years old now and had already been told the Soulmate’s Tale, an age-old story that explained the occasional phantom pains that she experienced. She was told to think of her soulmate like a best friend, someone she may not know but was intricately linked to. Feeling each other’s pain bonded two people closely, so close that they often became lifelong friends, granted they managed to meet. It was kind of like having a twin, she thought. A ‘pain twin’.

Knowing that however, made her feel bad for her soulmate. Honeymaren’s daily routine was physically demanding at best, excruciating at worst. Come to think of it, her soulmate seemed rather idle. Aside from the feeling of a twinge on her skin, like a scraped knee, Honeymaren couldn’t recall any severe pain.

Honeymaren’s soulmate probably hated her, she thought, chuckling to herself. Most of the pain her soulmate felt most likely came from Honeymaren herself.

.

That all changed one day. Honeymaren lay in bed, unable to sleep. It felt like a great pressure was sitting on her chest. It made it difficult to breathe, leaving her to only breathe shallowly. Worry encompassed Honeymaren’s mind, unsure of the cause. Without doing it herself, the worry tightened, increasing the shallowness of her breath as if the worry constricted the air from her lungs. She knew then that these sensations weren’t her own. They were her partner’s, who somewhere out there in the world was experiencing more pain than they had ever before.

It wasn’t like anything Honeymaren herself had felt in the past either. The unruliness of her emotions and her shortness of breath were rooted internally. This wasn’t caused by some broken bone or a deep wound.

No.

This felt more like a broken heart.

Honeymaren didn’t get to sleep that night with the pain lasting through the dark hours until dawn. By the time the sun rose, she was exhausted. It wasn’t the fact that she hadn’t slept. But rather, the emotional turmoil disabled her like no other physical pain could. It was then that she really understood the meaning of soulmates.

For the first time, her soulmate wasn’t some abstract, detached concept to Honeymaren. No, her soulmate was a person. Who she wished she could hug and give warmth. Even if her partner didn’t know it, the two of them grew closer that day. Then, Honeymaren resolved to stay in bed, feigning sickness and exhaustion to get out of her training. Less for herself, but more for her soulmate. Honeymaren figured they could use a day off too.

…

“ _I’m trying_ \- _I can’t control it,”_ Elsa gasped out as an icicle shot out from her hand, against her will. It slammed into the door of her bedroom and her parents jumped back in alarm.

Agnarr reached out for her tentatively. “It’s alright, Elsa. Don’t be scared.”

Elsa jerked her hands away from him. “Don’t touch me. _Please_. I don’t want to hurt you too.” Disdained, she stared at her gloved hands, not sure how much longer life planned to go on like this.

Elsa was entering her teen years no less confused about her spiraling powers than she had been the night she accidentally struck Anna. Nothing that her parents suggested helped. Nothing that _anyone_ suggested helped. Elsa was completely and utterly alone in this.

Which was maybe the worst part of all.

When her parents left her in her room, chancing affectionate squeezes to her shoulders as they exited to still show their love and support, Elsa curled up by the window and looked out at the kingdom.

_She couldn’t give up._ As the princess, she had a duty to be in control. However, her awareness of her inherited responsibility didn’t stop the mournful feeling in her chest. She partially mourned some loss of herself; the light, playful, and, at times, mischievous side of her that got buried under her anxieties and problems. She mourned the loss of the life she could have had, had she not injured Anna and turned her powers into the worst part of herself.

Sighing, she continued to stew in these emotions. Elsa was a stewer. She couldn’t help the ways she overthought, sometimes letting negative emotions fester, drowning out the brightness of life around her.

Then a sliver of annoyance crossed Elsa’s features when she felt a hard pinch on the back of her hand. She pulled her glove off and inspected the skin.

There was nothing there.

Hesitantly at first, unsure if she had imagined the sensation, Elsa pinched the same spot herself.

Then, a lighter, but still ever-present feeling of a pinch answered her unspoken theory.

Her soulmate was sending her a message.

_'Hey! Cut it out! Quit moping!'_

Elsa was never certain of how much her soulmate could feel. She supposed that since the meaning of pain was subjective, her soulmate could feel all forms of pain, regardless if it was physical or not.

Through her soulmate, Elsa was well-acquainted with the physical world of pain. At various parts of the day, Elsa’s body ached. From pain in her shoulder to her knee, to her back, it was seemingly all-over and never-ending. The pain felt like sharp whacks as if she had been hit. Or thuds as if she had just fallen. Her soulmate was a very active person and got in all kinds of trouble.

Or maybe they were surrounded by people constantly _giving_ them trouble. Elsa hoped not.

Never once had Elsa considered communicating with them, showing some solidarity. She was stuck in her head constantly, as her world revolved solely around being the heir to the kingdom and her turbulent powers.

What if the message didn't mean what Elsa had instinctively assumed? What if the message from her soulmate sounded more like…

_'Hey. I’m with you. I feel you.'_

_'You are not alone.'_

…

Honeymaren learned in her teens that her soulmate was female if the monthly phantom pains in her abdomen were anything to go by. Having period cramps twice a month instead of just once was like some sick prank from the universe. Mother Nature could be a bitch sometimes.

However, Honeymaren grew accustomed to it. Just like she grew accustomed to the pressure on her chest that never fully lifted. Some days she didn’t notice it all. Other days it made her heavier. It was harder to get out of bed on those days. But she reminded herself that the pain wasn’t hers. It was her partner’s. And it was worse for them.

When Honeymaren was 18, it was the most unbearable it had ever been. All day and all night, the pain rang through her body like a gong. She didn’t know where it ended, but she knew where it started. Honeymaren put a hand to her heart and imagined the body, mind, and soul that was attached to the feelings she felt in a second-hand manner. If only she knew her partner. If only Maren had some context. Maybe she couldn’t make the pain go away, but could she make it better?

By now, Honeymaren had a more substantial, deeper understanding of soulmates. Soulmates weren’t always romantic, but they often were. Whoever was on the other end of their connection was someone she could love.

No, it was someone that she already loved. Just not in the fullest way that she could yet.

Honeymaren was leaning against a tree, staring out at the mist that shrouded every day of her life. Then, the feeling of a pinch was dull but undeniable. Maren lifted her hand at the sensation. She pinched back.

She truly hoped that she would see the face behind these faint pinches one day and say the unspoken words.

_Don’t worry. I’m here_. _I’m not going anywhere._

…

When Honeymaren was 21 years old, the pressure on her chest suddenly lessened, the sporadic bouts of sadness nearly gone. The pain became barely noticeable, if at all, and she let out a sigh of relief that she had been holding for over ten years. Whatever was plaguing her soulmate had eased its hold. 

What came next were most likely the most blissful years her soulmate had had in a long time. Knowing that their pain was shared, Honeymaren sent a small apology up into the universe each time she got hurt during sparring or when she landed a bit too hard coming down from a tree. But her training _had_ paid off. She got hurt much less frequently than as a kid because she honed her skills with the staff to almost mastery and traversed the forest terrain with swiftness.

…

A smile crossed Anna’s face at the sight of Olaf and Elsa huddled closely together, sleeping peacefully in the back of the wagon. She turned around and regarded Kristoff who was handling Sven’s reins.

“They're both asleep. So... what do you wanna do?” she asked playfully. She leaned towards him in her seat.

Kristoff chuckled knowingly before saying, “Sven, keep us steady, will ya?”

Just as Anna was puckering up her lips Kristoff began speaking, doing his best to seize the moment to pop _the question_. “ _Anna-“_ his voice cracked awkwardly. He tried again, “ _Ahem_ \- Anna, remember our first trip like this when I said you have to be crazy to want to marry a man you just met?

Anna who had wistfully looked away as she recalled how they met seemed to still at that. “Wait, what? Crazy? You didn't say I was crazy- you think I'm _crazy_?” She careened her head dubiously to meet Kristoff’s eyes again.

**“** No- I did- you were.” Sven’s eyes grew wide and groaned loud enough for Kristoff to notice, not wanting to witness the conversation derail so suddenly. Kristoff continued, “ _Not_ crazy, clearly.” He tried to chuckle convincingly. “Just naïve.” When Anna only responded by sliding further away from him on the wagon seat Kristoff scrambled to explain, “Not naive, just, ah… just, new to love. Like I was, and, when you're new, you are bound to get it... wrong.”

“So, you're saying, I'm wrong for you?” Anna enquired somewhat coolly but confused.

Kristoff wanted to slap himself. The conversation was going so, so badly. “What? No, no-“ His voice sounded off. “I'm not saying you're wrong, or crazy, I'm saying-“

Mercifully, Elsa sprang up from the back of the wagon, suddenly awake, and interrupted him. “Kristoff, stop, please.”

He willingly complied, stopping the trainwreck from getting worse. “Good idea.”

Elsa continued, oblivious to the lovers’ quarrel. “I hear it. I hear the voice.”

Anna leapt down from her seat to wake Olaf as Elsa’s eyes were trained on the horizon that was completely covered in a thick, tall mist.

Kristoff scratched the back of his head but paused at the feeling of a burn on his tongue. His soulmate had obviously just drunk or eaten something hot too eagerly, causing them both some discomfort. Kristoff looked back at Anna who was holding Olaf’s hand, busy with helping him out of the wagon.

Going back over his previous conversation with Anna in his head, Kristoff begrudgingly wondered why it was so difficult for him to just say what he felt instead of skirting around it like he had and causing miscommunication. He wondered if voicing his real feelings to his girlfriend would be easier in a world where Anna _was_ his soulmate. Would they be more in tune if they had that special connection? But she wasn’t his soulmate- and he knew he couldn’t use that as an excuse to not _try_ his hardest to get on the same page as her. He wouldn’t let their lack of a soulmate bond be their missing link.

He loved Anna. She was who he wanted to be with. He was full of certainty when he thought it in his head, now he had to just say it out loud to her.

… 

Their small group startled at the sound of a horn being blown somewhere in the forest. As they huddled together, Anna reached out and grabbed the ice sword from one of the frozen sculptures around them.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“I have no idea.”

When they had entered, the Enchanted Forest was full of rich autumn hues. But the sun had set and now their surroundings were swathed in a foreboding darkness that kept them all on edge.

The sound from the horn continued ominously and they retreated deeper into the forest with caution and fear.

“Olaf, get behind me,” said Elsa determinedly to the small snowman. She had her hands out, ready to throw down if need be.

The wind started to whistle more strongly and forest creatures strangely croaked and cawed around them. Suddenly, a large bush rustled in front of them so Anna surged forward, cutting the foliage away with her sword.

There, a group of warriors was revealed, having stalked towards them quietly without the Arendellians knowing. Some more warriors suddenly jumped down from the branches above and before anyone could blink their staffs were out and pointed at Elsa, Anna, and the rest of their family.

“Lower your weapon,” the woman at the front demanded of Anna. She had a steely gaze that meant business and surely wouldn’t take no for an answer.

The next instant, a group of soldiers clanged their swords on their shields loudly, alerting everyone in the grove of their presence.

“And you lower yours,” commanded the leader.

Anna gasped recognizing their uniforms, “Arendellian soldiers?”

“Threatening my people, lieutenant?”

“Invading my dance space, Yelana?”

Anna shook her head confusedly, gesticulating with the sword at the scene in front of her. “Why does that solider look so familiar?”

What came next happened too fast for Elsa to process all at once. The soldiers sprung forward to disarm Anna and the warriors responded in kind. Fearful that her family was in danger, Elsa threw out her hands and the ground underneath them froze solid.

The oncoming band of warriors and horde of soldiers fell onto the ice all at once. Elsa jumped at the distinct feeling of a sharp pang to her behind and looked around quizzically.

“That was magic,” said the lieutenant in disbelief. “Did you see that?”

“Of course, I saw it,” replied Yelana as she gathered herself and scooted across the ice.

Anna commented sarcastically from the corner of her mouth at her sister, “Well, you chose a nice cold greeting.”

All Elsa could do is look forwards with a slightly worried but mostly confused expression on her face. The conversation continued around her, but her mind zoned out.

_Had she imagined that slightly painful sensation as everyone around her fell to the ground?_

Now as she thought about it, Elsa couldn’t say for certain since the events had happened so fast. It had never been imperative to find her soulmate among her many duties and difficulties. But it would be absurd not to be curious if her soulmate happened to be close…

…

_The Next Day_

Honeymaren’s thoughts drifted as she and Ryder ambled through the forest, gathering firewood for supper tonight. The sun was already starting to set casting a warm pink and red glow over the scenery. Her brother whistled some sort of melody beside her.

The past day and a half had been beyond weird, to say the least. The forest was always full of surprises, with it being magical and home to various spirits. But never had Honeymaren imagined strangers from the outside world being able to make their way into the forest.

Yelana was right. The Northuldra only trusted nature. When it spoke, they listened. Honeymaren could only believe that the forest had let the Arendellian strangers in for a good reason. She hoped that the queen and the princess were safe while they traveled further north.

Not only had the new visitors brought confusion, but so had the random flare of pain in Honeymaren’s chest earlier that day. It had risen so suddenly, so reminiscent of the pain that plagued her when she was younger. It wasn’t her pain, of course, but it had become familiar to her. It could only mean that her soulmate was suffering, perhaps experiencing a relapse of what had disturbed them for years in the past.

Unbeknownst to Maren, the sensation of pain had coincided with a certain platinum-clad queen and a ginger-haired princess discovering a long-lost piece to their parents’ disappearance, broken and washed up on the shore…

Over the course of the day, the sensation had faded again which brought Honeymaren some comfort. It was troubling that it happened, nevertheless.

.

Elsa had been utterly dismayed to push Anna and Olaf away after discovering their parents’ ship. It had been painful to do so, but she needed to protect the family that she had left at all costs. Every inch of herself that she could give to finding answers, she would. She owed it not only to Anna but now, to her parents too.

So, she dove into the frigid Dark Sea with somewhat reckless abandon.

It was fine, she told herself. The cold couldn’t bother her.

.

It was evening. Honeymaren sat with her people around the fire, savoring the warmth. She shivered, keeping her arms locked tight to her body and rubbing her hands together.

She remarked, “It’s getting pretty cold. We might get an early winter at this rate.”

Ryder quirked an eyebrow at her. “I don’t feel that cold, to be honest.” He lifted his hand to her forehead to check her temperature. “Are you getting sick?”

“I don’t think so? I feel fine besides the chilliness.”

“Hm, your temperature doesn’t seem feverish.” Ryder reached for a blanket next to him and handed it to her.

“Thanks. Maybe I’m just sitting by a mysterious draft.” Then, she failed to stifle a yawn. “Actually, it might be best if I just turn in now. Get some rest.”

Maren rose with the blanket around her shoulders, not ready to give it up because she admittedly still felt unusually cold. She started to make her way to her goahti.

.

Elsa swept her long hair over her shoulder as she looked around the large room, in awe at the magical, life-like sculptures that moved around her in Ahtohallan. As she studied them, she realized that they represented real memories. With a smile on her face, she walked past them. She came up to a moving sculpture of the gallivanting Duke of Weselton at her coronation three years ago. She moved her body in a little jig, remembering the party before her good mood spoiled at the sight of Hans. Elsa flicked her hand and the sculpture of the prince crumbled to the floor.

Then, Elsa eagerly stepped forward at the voices of her parents. They were in an embrace and her father’s voice rang out, “I love you.”

“I need to tell you about my past. And where I’m from.”

“I’m listening…”

The tender expressions on her parent’s faces made Elsa pause and swell up with an inexplicable emotion. It was akin to remorse, but yet, also a deep love for her mother and father, who had only wanted to do their best for their daughters. She wished she could talk to her mother about her real heritage. Now, all she could do was press on forwards and try to honor where she came from with what she did next.

Elsa followed the icy figures of her grandfather, King Runeard, and his companion. They walked down a descending path while discussing their plans to implement a dam to weaken the Northuldra and their lands.

_Dive down deep into her sound…_

Elsa continued after them but stopped abruptly at a sharp drop at the end of the icy path. She gasped and looked down at the ground below. Wisps of air came out of her when she exhaled. She steeled herself as she listened to the voice of Runeard plotting wrongdoing and evil against the peaceful people of the Enchanted Forest. She couldn’t leave without knowing the truth. So, she jumped and fell the long way down, the skirt of her dress billowing up behind her.

Elsa landed with grace and straightened to the sight of a memory from the day of the celebration between the Northuldra and Arendellians. The Northuldra leader was urging Runeard to cut off the plans for the dam. They agreed to talk more in private. 

The floor around Elsa was dark, yet glossy and glazed like pure, black ice. The air was astronomically cold, so much so that she shivered, perhaps for the first time ever. Elsa looked down at her hands and, to her horror, frost began spreading over her skin, cracking into icy textures. She wrapped her arms around herself as her breathing became more rapid. She could feel the frost on her hands inch up her arms and cascade across her chest. 

The Northuldra leader and Runeard had moved indoors. She looked on at the scene before her, overwhelmed with fear, while also telling herself to hold on just a little longer. Now the layer of frost on her body had reached her face.

Runeard unsheathed his sword and instinctively Elsa reached out to stop him. But, as he struck the Northuldra leader in the back, an awful cracking sound emitted from the floor. Or more specifically, from Elsa’s feet.

Helpless to stop it, Elsa’s legs froze, then her hips, then her torso. She had one moment left to do something desperate, so she reached her hand up and shot a lone orb-like bolt of magic into the air.

The last thing that escaped her lips before she froze completely was, “ _Anna.”_

.

Honeymaren’s steps grew smaller and smaller on the way to her hut. The coldness in her body escalated to the point where she could barely walk. Her shoulders were hunched, and her arms were wrapped so tightly around herself that she half expected to bruise. But it did nothing to soothe the cold that enveloped her body. It was as if it was in her bones, like her blood had been replaced with an icy river that coursed through her veins.

She reached the door of her hut and summoned any strength she had left to yank it open and throw herself inside. She immediately sank down onto the furs of her bed and rolled under the covers, wrapping herself up tightly. She trembled and shivered but when she gasped out, no foggy air came out. She touched her cheek with her hand and was perplexed when she felt the temperature of her skin was greatly warmer than what she felt in her body. 

That’s when the answer came to her. _She_ wasn’t in any danger. This pain was not her own.

This frigidity belonged to her soulmate.

Just when understanding dawned on her, she cried out. A powerful, painful surge coursed through her body, starting at her feet, and moving upwards to her head. Honeymaren curled into a ball, her face strained with distress. It was like her entire insides were freezing over. She felt so inexplicably cold that it almost _burned_.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the pain was gone. Honeymaren unfurled her arms from around herself. Her body stilled, no longer quaking with tremors and shivers.

She didn’t feel cold anymore. The blankets around her gave her warmth, almost too much as she was still in her outdoor garments. Her hat had come off her head when she had rolled around in agony in the bed. Honeymaren readjusted onto her back and pushed some of the heavy blankets away from her, now feeling suffocated by them.

What the hell just happened, she wondered to herself.

_Was her soulmate okay???_

Quickly, Honeymaren pinched her hand hard enough that she knew it wouldn’t be missed.

She waited. Seconds ticked by and her eyebrows downturned, worry coming to the forefront.

Honeymaren pinched herself again, even harder this time.

Nothing came back.

Her eyes darted around, looking up at the ceiling. Panic overcame her. She tried to still her breathing that threatened to grow frantic by placing an arm over her face and inhaled deeply. The leather hide of her sleeve smelled rich and earthy and she focused on the scent to drown out the little voice in her head that told her the silence could only mean one terrible, heartbreaking thing.

_No_ , she thought to herself. Don’t assume the worst. You can try again tomorrow. Don’t give up hope.

Honeymaren distracted herself by changing her clothes into her sleepwear. She undid her braid and combed her hands through her long, thick hair. But as much as she tried to avoid it, her mind strayed to her soulmate again and again.

_Could they be… gone?_

She shook her head, feeling a swell in her chest and pressure behind her eyes.

_No, no, no!_ _Don’t think like that._

Honeymaren lifted the covers again and turned in for the night. She shut her eyes and tried to force herself to fall into a slumber. Nonetheless, she found herself repeating a mantra in her head throughout the rest of the night.

_Don’t think like that._

_Don’t think like that._

_Don’t think like that._

_Don’t…_

_…_

Honeymaren stood next to Ryder and watched Kristoff walk through the trees with his arm around the princess. Just moments ago, the woman had been sprinting across the crumbling dam as water sprayed and erupted around her. At the last second, Matthias had reached his hand out and caught the falling princess.

Ryder gasped next to her and Honeymaren looked up to where he was looking. Like melting clouds, the mist rapidly cleared before their very eyes.

“ _Wow_ , look at the sky.”

Honeymaren smiled and bumped her brother’s shoulder with her own.

“I just didn’t realize there was so much of it,” he remarked with amazement.

It was a flawless sight. A blue blanket stretched out as far as the eye could see.

And yet, Honeymaren’s smile was wistful at best. She couldn’t finally gain her freedom but lose her soulmate on the same day, she thought. It was tragically unfair.

.

Just a few yards away, Anna sighed in Kristoff’s arms. Her expression and demeanor were of visible pain.

“I’m sorry I left you behind. I was just so desperate to protect her.”

“I know, I know. It’s okay,” Kristoff replied honestly. “My love is not fragile.”

It was a moment full of emotions. All of a sudden, the reindeer ran forward into the clearing that had previously been shrouded in the thick mist. The entire herd excitedly ran laps on the new land. Their joy was pure and unadulterated. It surely matched what most of the spectators were feeling.

Most, but not all.

But then, first seeming like a small dot in the distance, a shimmering figure on horseback came into view on the water.

…

A somewhat short time later, Anna and Kristoff were helping Matthias and the Arendelle soldiers prepare a wagon for the journey back to Arendelle. The men and women were desperate to return to their true home after 30 years of being locked in a prison. One of the reindeer was being dressed with reins and a harness for the journey.

Elsa was busy showering Yelana with gratitude for her hospitality during their short stay and asking a few questions to help her envision what life in the forest was really like. She knew that when she went home, she would have much to think about but the words from Honeymaren echoed in her head.

_You belong up here._

Elsa couldn’t help but see the truth in that. As the fifth spirit, she was meant to be close to the source of her magic, be the bridge between the spirits and the natural world.

She exchanged a few last words with Yelana before turning in the direction of the wagon.

And then, she felt it.

A small, but familiar sensation.

She smiled at the way her soulmate checked up on her. Elsa pinched her skin, sending the message back.

.  
_Moments before…_

Honeymaren gazed up at the sky from where she was standing, her mind and feelings still genuinely torn. She closed her eyes and pinched herself hard again, knowing the last time she did so she didn’t get a response.

She waited and as expected nothing came immediately.

Her heart started to sink.

But then, without meaning to, Honeymaren gasped when she felt her pinch get returned. She looked at her hand and knew it was no fluke, no figment of her imagination. The feeling had been real.

_Thank goodness_. She sighed.

Her brother appeared next to her and pushed a traveling bag into her hands.

“Come on!” he exclaimed and jogged in the direction of the wagon.

“Uh, Ryder?” She followed him questioningly. “What’s this for?” she asked gesturing to the bag.

“You’ll see!” He sidled up next to Kristoff and they bumped fists. “Hey, so, I was just wondering if you guys had any extra space on the trip back for maybe me and my sister ‘cause we’ve been trapped here our entire lives and have never really seen anything besides the inside of the forest but no pressure to take us with you or anything-” Ryder finished with a big breath.

Honeymaren stood dumbly next to him and was about to protest, not wanting to impose when Anna piped up, “Sure! We’ve got plenty of space and extra rooms in the castle for you guys to sleep in.”

Honeymaren said unsurely, “I mean, if it’s not too much trouble?”

Anna waved her worries away immediately. “Not at all! I would be dying to see the world too if I were you.”

Just like that, Honeymaren and Ryder exchanged an excited look, their smiles growing.

…

When the wagon full of travelers found the wagon that Elsa and her family had arrived in, the group split up. The royal family stood from their seats to reoccupy their abandoned vehicle. Elsa paused however and turned to the Northuldra siblings. “Would you like to join us?”

Ryder and Honeymaren didn’t need to think twice. They leapt up and off the wagon, leaving the soldiers behind with a wave.

Once the crew was settled in the back of the wagon, Kristoff signaled for Sven to start taking them back to Arendelle. Olaf sat next to him, telling him excitedly about the meaning of ' _transformation_ '. 

"Here, try these,” Anna said as she opened a small pouch of cookies that she pulled from the small pile of baggage. “They’re called sandbakkelse.”

Honeymaren plucked a round cookie from the open pouch and murmured thanks. When she took a bite the cookie partly crumbled over her fingertips and a sweet taste met her tongue. The snack tasted light, slightly fragrant, and mildly nutty.

Ryder had already eaten his cookie whole and eagerly asked, “Can I have another one?”

Anna giggled and handed him the whole pouch. “Go ahead. We’ve got plenty more where we’re going.”

The Northuldra siblings expressed more thanks at their company’s generosity.

Anna turned to Elsa then. “Oh, when we get to Arendelle we _have_ to take them to our favorite bakery.”

“And to the chocolatier,” replied Elsa, amused.

“Yes! Maybe we can convince Kai to give us the day off to give them a tour. Maybe if we use some buzzwords like ‘ _diplomatic mission’_ and ‘ _unity endorsement’.”_

Elsa giggled but her queenly side took over for a moment and clasped her hands together. “Even though Arendelle is okay, we’re not going to have any time to ourselves as soon as we arrive.”

Honeymaren looked back and forth between the two sisters as they talked about all the tasks that awaited them at their kingdom.

“Damage control after the unruly spirits shook up the kingdom-“

“Then there’s the matter of the resituating the homecoming soldiers-“

“Plus the council will need to know about the civilization we discovered-“

“We should throw a party to celebrate freeing the forest!”

_“Anna-“_

From being Yelana’s close student, Honeymaren knew what lengths and sacrifices it took to lead. The women before her were so young, yet so laden with duty. They clearly cared about Arendelle very much. It made Elsa and Anna’s decision to free the forest, even at the expense of the dam and potentially their own kingdom, that much more meaningful.

Honeymaren realized she had a great amount of respect for the queen and princess of Arendelle.

Then, hearing the sisters verbally process all their upcoming plans, Kristoff turned in his seat. “Hey, if you’re both swamped when we get back, I’d love to show Ryder and Honeymaren around.”

Elsa and Anna looked over at him. “Really? That would be great,” responded Elsa.

Anna agreed but she pouted, saying that she wanted to show their new friends around too.

_New friends_. The words resonated pleasantly in Honeymaren’s mind, mulling them over. From being isolated for all her life, she rarely made new friends. She loved her community of course, but this was the first real opportunity to meet new people that she had ever had. For the first time ever, she’ll be sleeping in a different bed tonight. For the first time ever, she won’t wake up to a day of tending to the reindeer or eating her meals by a campfire.

“I have a question,” said Honeymaren suddenly looking right at Elsa. “Earlier, I thought I heard people say you gave your life to free the forest. I just want to know, what happened out there?”

Elsa stilled, only her hair blew lightly in the breeze. She was thinking back to the moment that Ahtohallan overcame her.

“Not all warnings in lullabies are real but at least the one about Ahtohallan turned out to be true.”

Honeymaren pulled her legs up, hugging them with her arms. “What do you mean?”

Without doing it on purpose, Elsa mirrored Honeymaren’s pose. “I was in Ahtohallan and I saw some sort of a memory of my grandfather. I followed him and he took me somewhere so deep in the glacier that I-“ Her voice faintly hitched. “I froze.”

Anna blinked blankly. “Froze as in…?”

“Solid. Like an ice sculpture,” finished Elsa.

That’s when Honeymaren stopped breathing in and out completely and she tried not to let her surprise show on her face. The group continued talking around her but every molecule in her body paused trying to process the information just given to her.

Had she heard that right?

_Froze_.

As in freezing cold, all over Elsa’s body like a statue. And she must have been stuck like that until what Anna did acted as a freeing mechanism.

The idea of Elsa being _the one_ , her actual soulmate, seemed crazy. But Honeymaren needed to know...

With her legs still pulled to her chest, Maren put a hand in her lap, out of view. Then, she pressed her thumb against her index finger hard and watched Elsa intently.

The blonde queen didn’t react. Perplexed, Honeymaren dug her thumb into her finger even harder with her thumbnail.

At that, Elsa’s brow finally slightly crinkled in displeasure. Honeymaren waited, only to find her soulmate wasn’t responding. The crinkle in Elsa’s brow wasn’t an undeniable confirmation.

But it could still be something.

…

They arrived in Arendelle the next day. Sitting in the wagon had started to become bothersome to Honeymaren's body but when the Kingdom came into view after they crested a hill, she had shot up from her position on the floor and looked at the sight with childlike awe.

Arendelle was a lovely and quaint kingdom. It had a small village of houses, stores, and workshops. Some houses were haphazardly scattered over the hillside, around uneven rocks and tall green trees. The larger part of Arendelle was clustered in the center, had cobblestone streets lined with lamps and large flower boxes. The kingdom was nestled right against the water with docks lining the harbor.

As expected, as soon as they got to the castle various people emerged from the castle gates and from the houses to greet the royal family with relieved smiles. Anna and Elsa stood from the wagon and waved at the people – _their_ people – before jumping down onto the street. Before her mother could stop her, a little girl rushed forward from the crowd and collided with the two sisters in a tight, brash hug.

A large, round man walked forward from those who came from the castle and addressed the two women. Honeymaren and Ryder watched from the wagon, their elbows and forearms resting on the wood of the sides of the wagon.

“I take it your journey was… er, successful?” Asked the man wide-eyed, taking in the queen’s new appearance.

Elsa turned to him. “Yes, Kai. We have much to discuss with everyone.”

“Then, let’s start right away.”

_“Wait_ -“ Suddenly the little girl was tugging on the cape of Elsa's dress. “Please, do the magic! Do the magic!”

Elsa laughed good-naturedly and waved her hand. A swirl of snowflakes coursed forward and circled the small girl. The magic took shape around her and suddenly the girl had a white cape tied around her shoulders just like Elsa did. The girl held it out with her hands, an excited expression on her face.

A similar smile grew on Honeymaren’s face at the scene. Arendelle didn’t seem bad at all. The people were normal people. The children loved to play and laugh just like all children did. And their monarchs, Honeymaren was learning, were fair, kind, and just as playful as the children were.

.

Like Anna had promised earlier, the Northuldra siblings were given rooms in the castle to stay in. The first thing Honeymaren did was flop down onto the bed and release a sigh of content after a long day of traveling. She didn’t get much respite because Ryder and Kristoff knocked on her door five minutes after she laid down, exclaiming they were ready to go into town. Honeymaren rolled her eyes. How did those two have so much energy, she thought.

But Honeymaren felt herself rejuvenate at the new smells, sounds, and sights of Arendelle. At the market, she sampled various fruits, some of which she had never even heard of before. They tried sweets and Ryder bit into something that was called a ‘cupcake’. She pointed at him and laughed when the creamy top left a dollop of frosting on the tip of his nose. Then, any laughter stalled when she tried it herself and flavors exploded on her tongue. The dessert was much sweeter than the cookie earlier and it had a soft, squishy texture. Honeymaren yelped in surprise and almost dropped the cake dessert at a loud chime that echoed throughout the square. Kristoff was quick to reassure her that it was just the hourly bell from the clock tower. Her surprise turned to amusement when the bells chimed a short melody. It was… charming how quirky this place was.

“So, Kristoff, did you grow up here like Elsa and Anna?” Honeymaren asked him as they walked down the street. Honeymaren pretended not to notice that she and Ryder were getting stares. Perhaps it was from being in Kristoff’s company or perhaps it was because of their abnormal attire.

“No, actually,” Kristoff laughed. “I grew up in the Valley of the Living Rock. Since I was a kid, I traveled with ice harvesters and learned their ways. I don’t have a typical upbringing, but it’s made me who I am today.”

Ryder nudged him with his elbow. “Hey, that’s alright. I mean, there's nothing typical about growing up in a secret magical forest like we did either.”

The three of them were still chatting away as they walked around a corner into an adjacent alleyway. That was when Kristoff accidentally bumped into a brawny man who was carrying a large metal keg of ale. The man had come from the alley suddenly, seemingly in a hurry.

“ _Ouch!”_ complained Kristoff and Ryder loudly at the same time.

Kristoff looked up and then exclaimed, “Oaken!”

“Kristoff! I’m so sorry. Didn’t mean to bump ‘ya,” replied the big man in his thick accent.

“It’s okay,” Kristoff brushed him off. “I can take it.”

“Say hello to the girls for me,” called out Oaken as he began to shuffle away, keg in tow. He showcased his brute strength when he hoisted it up onto his shoulder with one hand and waved in a friendly manner with the other.

Kristoff turned back to his companions, rubbing the sore spot on his chest gingerly. “Man, that guy is strong.”

Unbeknownst to Kristoff during his exchange with Oaken, Ryder’s eyes had gone wide and was now pointing at Kristoff with his index finger.

“No way! We’re _soulmates!”_

“What?!” blurted Kristoff and Honeymaren out simultaneously.

“I swear I felt it! When you bumped into that guy. I had pain in my chest.”

Honeymaren recovered from her surprise faster than Kristoff and declared, “Well, there’s only one way to know for sure…” She reared her fist back and punched Ryder hard in the shoulder.

“Ow! _Maren!”_ Her little brother whined.

Kristoff jumped at the distinct sensation of a jab on his shoulder. “Woahhh…” he said stunned.

“I know right,” Ryder matched the blond man’s expression.

“Do you know what this means???”

“ _Soulmate bros!”_ They proclaimed together.

“This is awesome!”

“Did we just become best friends?!?”

Honeymaren just stared on in profound amusement at the exchange between the two men. What were the chances that both she and her brother would be soulmate linked to the odd royal family of Arendelle who came upon their forest unannounced?

Now she _had_ to know for sure whether or not Elsa was her soulmate.

.

Honeymaren wandered the castle halls after returning from Kristoff’s tour. Those two and Sven were off somewhere, probably bonding over their newfound connection.

She was walking somewhat aimlessly, killing time before dinner in about an hour. She stared up at paintings of past Arendelle leaders as she walked by them. Her eyes took in the brush strokes of the oil paint, bewildered at the lives that roamed these halls before her, their visages immortalized on canvas. She didn’t know their stories and they most likely didn’t know hers; that is, the story of her people, trapped inside the Enchanted Forest. The intersections of Arendelle and the Northuldra began only 34 four years ago.

Honeymaren wondered how long the Arendellians and the Northuldra will maintain a rapport with each other?

She had a good hunch that it wouldn’t be short-lived.

Honeymaren stalled in front of a larger painting of a man and a woman. The man had red hair was standing so firm and upright, not even the strongest gust of wind from Gale would knock him over. He was adorned with a crown and various medals. On his left stood a woman with brown hair in a lavender-colored dress. Her arm was draped over his and her posture was looser, less restrained. She bore a striking resemblance to both Elsa and Anna. Honeymaren neared the painting, reading the inscription on the frame.

_King Agnarr and Queen Iduna_  
★. _1794_ \- **✝**. _1836_  
★. _1795 -_ **✝**. _1836_

Honeymaren stepped back, saddened at how recent the deaths were. She analyzed the features of the two figures again and reached what was likely the only conclusion. The parents of Elsa and Anna looked self-assured and confident as they stared out from the surface of the painting. To live such a short life, to go from looking over an entire kingdom to just looking over the insides of this empty hallway, Honeymaren was struck with the feeling of how precious life was.

She was determined to never waste a single second of it.

With that in mind, Honeymaren continued walking. When she rounded a corner, she saw glassy doors at the end of the hallway that opened to a balcony. Elsa stood there, with her back to Honeymaren, her hands on the railing.

Honeymaren approached discreetly. The woman in front of her was so different from her. Elsa’s platinum blonde hair was almost white, and her complexion was light and fair. Her skin would be prone to burns in the summer, if not for her icy powers that kept her body regulated and unerringly cool. What would Elsa look like without her powers? What if she was just a normal girl, from a normal family? Would her hair be brown? Would her freckles carry a darker hue instead of their reddish-pink? Would she look more like her mother, as Anna embodied more from their father?

Honeymaren rapped her closed hand against the door frame, signaling her presence. Elsa startled only slightly, then turned with an easy smile on her face.

“Hope I’m not disturbing you,” started Honeymaren.

“Not at all. Please join me,” replied Elsa, extending her upturned palm for Honeymaren to take.

She did and joined Elsa at the railing, looking out at the view. The balcony wasn’t pointed towards the docks or the busy market at the castle grounds below. Instead, the balcony just looked out over the water and some mountains in the distance. The sky was full of orange and pink colors that took Honeymaren’s breath away. The previous day, during their trip, was the first time Honeymaren had seen a sunset.

As if reading her mind, Elsa asked, “As beautiful as it was yesterday?”

“Absolutely. I can’t imagine ever getting used to this sight.”

Elsa was looking at her with an unreadable expression. “Hearing you say that makes me wish I had reached the forest sooner.”

Honeymaren furrowed her brow. “You couldn't have known we were out there without the voice."

“I know that but nonetheless…” Elsa peered back at the view. “In this direction, due north, lies the forest. All this time, it was so close.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself," Maren said gently. "As soon as you heard the call, you acted. I’m proof of it, standing right here." She squeezed Elsa’s hand in hers without realizing it.

Elsa shook her head as if rearranging her thoughts. “Don’t mind me. I’m just in one of my moods. Tell me about your day with Kristoff.”

“It’s alright. I want to get to know you better. I can tell you all about my day when we’re with Anna and the others at the table for dinner. I’m sure she’ll ask me all about it too.”

“Oh yes,” Elsa giggled at the likely thought. “You can bet on that.”

Honeymaren continued, “Right now, it’s just us. I want to listen to you talk if you would like that.”

Elsa nodded contemplatively. “I enjoy Arendelle. And I enjoy my family. I feel this sense of responsibility to everyone here. But going to the forest taught me that I also have a responsibility to myself. If I’m part Northuldra, wouldn’t it be worth exploring what exactly that means?”

Honeymaren gave her a reassuring smile. “I sure think so. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I’d be happy to have a newcomer.”

“Thank you, Honeymaren.”

“For what?” She asked shrugging.

“For your support. It’s nice to have a new friend.”

Honeymaren glanced down at their clasped hands and felt a pull shoot through her chest. She mustered the courage to say, “Hey, I know we only just met, but I feel like I know you.”

A curious expression painted over Elsa’s features, “And why’s that?”

“You just… remind me of someone.”

“Who?”

“Well, I-“ Honeymaren scratched the back of her neck, suddenly nervous. “I’ve never met them. I don’t know- Do you have soulmates in Arendelle?”

“Yes. My parents were soulmates. Are you saying I remind you of your soulmate?”

“Kind of. Yes,” Honeymaren confirmed. “It’s just…” She realized she couldn’t explain herself without _actually_ explaining more details. She had no choice but to dive in and discard any reservations. “When you said you froze solid in Ahtohallan… it sounds crazy but the night you were gone with Anna I felt this insanely painful coldness wrap around me. It was like my insides had turned into ice and I could barely walk.”

That’s when Elsa let go of her hand. “ _What_? Were you okay?? How long did you feel like that?” Elsa clasped her hands together, visibly distraught.

Honeymaren moved to console Elsa instantly. She put her hands over Elsa’s. “It was just a few minutes at most. When it stopped it was if it never happened. But I was so worried that something terrible had taken place that I couldn’t sleep all night. Then when I pinched myself you didn’t respond- I mean, _if_ my soulmate _is_ you…” She trailed off.

“I’m glad you’re safe and healthy after that. God, I didn’t even _think_ about my soulmate at that moment. I was so focused on finding the truth, regardless of the danger. I was reckless.” Elsa looked at Honeymaren closely. “I’m sorry if I put you through that.”

“Apology accepted.” Honeymaren removed her hands from Elsa’s. Suggestively, she said, “We should probably check this soulmate theory before we get ahead of ourselves.”

“I agree. May I do the honors?” Elsa pinched her palm with enough force to make the sensation evident to her soulmate.

The sliver of doubt that remained in Honeymaren disintegrated the next second when her suspicions were confirmed at the tingling of her hand.

As was ritual...

Honeymaren pinched back,

And Elsa’s eyes lit up in understanding.

...

Epilogue

Soulmates; A connection that exists so that no person is ever truly alone during the worst moments of their life. As long as the connection lives, somebody out there understands your pain, and thus understands _you_.

_6 Months Later_

“Have you seen Elsa?”

“Nope. Sorry, Maren.”

“Hey, do you know where Elsa is?”

“Haven’t seen her today, Mare'.”

“Has _anyone_ seen Elsa?” Honeymaren asked a group of Northuldra men who were sanding a new batch of wooden staffs towards the side of the village.

“I think I saw her go in the direction of the meadow,” called Ryder from where he was standing with the other men.

“Oh, thank the spirits,” sighed Honeymaren.

Ryder walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s probably nothing. Just Elsa being… Elsa,” Honeymaren said as she wiggled her fingers in a non-descript motion. “She’s been gone since lunch and she’s not responding to my signals to her. That and my hat has mysteriously vanished.”

Ryder offered to look for Elsa with her and together they bid the group goodbye, departing for the meadow. They would have to track Elsa once they got there. There was no reason for Elsa to hang out in a field.

A cool breeze tickled the tips of Honeymaren's ears and she instinctively reached up to tug her hat down only to feel silly when she remembered that she didn’t have it on. The early March air was warming as spring began to emerge, carrying just remnants of lingering winter. It had been weeks since the last hard snowfall and some of the forest animals that had turned in for the winter were returning. Life in the forest was shifting with the changing of seasons, as ever and as it always would. 

The lushy grass of the meadow came into view as Honeymaren and Ryder reached the tree line. They walked to the edge of the grove and peered around the trunk of a tree to a sight that floored Maren's heart and took her breath away.

In the center of the meadow, standing on a heart-shaped rock, surrounded by a herd of reindeer, was Elsa. She was dressed in her Northuldra clothes that Honeymaren loved to see on her. The leather hide of the tunic hugged Elsa’s figure closely. The sight of Elsa, the love of Maren’s life, standing there, and locking eyes with her was captivating, almost ethereal. It distracted her entirely from Anna who stood at the side and threw out a bucket’s worth of helicopter seeds and purple flowers from the pail in her hands that cascaded across the air, turning the meadow into a romantic scenery. And cheekily on Elsa’s head was none other than Maren’s missing hat.

“Honeymaren Nattura!” Elsa called. “I would follow you to the ends of the Earth! You complete me in ways I never thought anyone could. Through our bond, our love is invincible. I love you so much - _Will you marry me??!_ ”

In equal parts shock and awe, Honeymaren’s covered her mouth with her hand.

“I- I…” She looked between Elsa’s celestial figure, Anna’s bright smile, the expectant gazes of the reindeer, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven, who stood in the meadow around Elsa.

Elsa’s entire family was here. It registered to Maren all at once that Elsa had been planning this in secret all day.

And Elsa was still waiting to get an answer.

“Yes!” It burst out of Honeymaren with strong certainty.

Relief flooded Elsa’s eyes and she jumped down from the rock. Honeymaren approached her and reached her arms out. At the sight of this, Elsa’s eyes pooled with more than just relief. Indescribable emotions flashed across her facial features. Honeymaren took Elsa's face in her hands and her eyebrows knitted together, overwhelmed also by this momentous but beautiful moment. Elsa’s arms wound around her back and their lips met in a sappy, wet kiss. It was sweet, but chaste, both of them aware of the large audience around them.

Elsa pulled back when a slight laugh hummed from her lips. “I’m glad you said yes.”

Maren nuzzled Elsa's nose affectionately with her own, her mouth pulled into a slight smirk. “We're _soulmates_ , you dork.”

With one last quick peck, they pulled apart and regarded Elsa’s family – no, _their_ family. Ryder had joined them, having clearly been in on the plan the entire time. Kristoff was watching them fondly, his hand on Anna’s shoulder as she wiped some straggling tears from her cheeks. She was surprisingly composed or maybe she had already effused all her emotions while Elsa and Maren had been caught up in each other’s arms, oblivious. 

Olaf sat on Sven’s back and exclaimed, “Does this mean we’re having another wedding?!” Olaf had loved weddings ever since he found out at Anna’s wedding that they required exorbitant amounts of cake and chocolate, two of his favorite things. And all the guests meant plenty of warm hugs too.

“Yes, but this time…” Elsa said as she took Maren’s hand and draped it across her own shoulders, leaning into the other woman. “We’re doing things a little bit differently. A mix of Arendelle and Northuldra customs.”

Honeymaren gazed at Elsa adoringly.

“That sounds perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soulmate bros! XD And I finally did an Elsamaren proposal. :D A lot of people commented that they wanted to see that.  
> 


End file.
